Keep the Green in “Green Building”

Please Send Letter

The US Green Building Council’s LEED standards encourage designers and builders to use environmentally sound products for commercial, residential, and institutional construction and remodeling.

By giving building projects credit for using FSC certified wood, for example, LEED works to transform building practices while also creating demand for environmentally responsible forestry.  

As the world’s preeminent green building certification system, LEED also sets the bar for what counts as environmentally sound construction. LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.”  

The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) is pressuring the USGBC to rewrite the LEED standards to give credit to any wood products, regardless of their source, and/or to wood certified by the AF&PA SFI and other weak wood marketing programs. This would make LEED misleading and ineffective at reducing environmental impacts, since the SFI allows and certifies destructive, business-as-usual industrial logging.  The SFI also doesn’t track much of its wood, and allows non-SFI wood to be marketed as SFI certified.

Please send a letter to the USGBC, encouraging the Council to maintain the integrity of the LEED standards by rejecting the AF&PA’s suggestions. Thank you!

Fully independent and not overly influenced by timber industry. FSC:YES SFI:NO
Strong forest and environmental protection standards. FSC:YES SFI:NO
Strong community protection standards. FSC:YES SFI:NO
Product content monitoring (chain of custody) consistently required. FSC:YES SFI:NO
Consistent link between product labels/claims and certified forests. FSC:YES SFI:NO
Strong certification and accreditation process. FSC:YES SFI:NO
Transparency and public participation consistently required. FSC:YES SFI:NO
Certifies some of the most environmentally destructive timber companies in North America. FSC:NO SFI:YES

Certification System Characteristics

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