Chapel Hill, NC----- As demand for green products grows, building, design and procurement professionals are expected to distinguish between truly green and green-washed wares.  To help educate these professionals on best practices in green purchasing, The Green Standard is introducing its Green Purchasing Accredited Professional training during the Greenbuild Conference in Boston.  The announcement is part of the BRIGHT GREEN, BRIGHT FUTURE launch event held from 5:30-7 p.m. on November 19 at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art.

Purchasers of building products and interior furnishings procure thousands of materials on a daily basis.  And everyday, requests for green products increase as builders and developers strive for LEED or Green Globes certification.  In an industry characterized by 10,000 building product manufacturers selling more than 61,000 distinct products, a systems approach to green purchasing is a must.  Participants in the Green Purchasing AP program will be empowered to use scientifically-robust yet user-friendly product certification programs as they become knowledgeable about best practices in product evaluation, certification and selection.

This intensive training and certification is open to architects, engineers, contractors, interior designers, facility managers, and governmental and educational procurement professionals.   Participants will learn how to replace "green wash" with resources requiring third party certification of environmental and sustainability attributes. The learning modules in the Green Purchasing AP training will enable purchasing professionals to understand the systems behind their green purchasing and to describe what metrics and tools have been used to document their green and sustainable attributes.  

The program will help organizations successfully navigate through today's increasingly environmentally-sensitive business landscape, while building value and competitive advantage.  Training for professionals in architectural and design firms, as well as those engaged in product procurement at a corporate, governmental or institutional level, will begin in January 2009.

The Green Purchasing Accredited Professional is part of The Green Standard's BRIGHT GREEN, BRIGHT FUTURE campaign, a yearlong educational initiative to empower manufacturers and purchasers to confidently navigate the environmental landscape while making lighter footprints.  The campaign also includes the introduction of the United States' first Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) System, which is considered the cutting edge resource in the emerging global product information system.  In addition to the EPD System, The Green Standard has developed the Gaia Product Profile, an innovative tool for integrating diverse types of performance information into a single and comprehensive document.  The Gaia will provide specifiers and purchasers with a summary of all of the information in a full Environmental Product Declaration Report.

The Green Standard President and CE0 Deborah Dunning says that the development of an EPD system, Gaia Product Profile and the Green Purchasing Accredited Professional training is the culmination of the organization's work over the past nine years. "We are pleased to be able to support U.S. manufacturers in becoming even more effective in the global marketplace and believe that this work will meet a longstanding need of both institutional and individual consumers in North America," she says. "Moreover, as our mission is to advance global sustainability through products and practices, it is fitting that our Gaia Product Profile refers to the principle that the earth is a whole living organism seeking to regulate itself and evolve to greater and greater degrees of harmonization."

The BRIGHT GREEN, BRIGHT FUTURE event on November 19 is open to all attendees of Greenbuild and other interested parties.  The event will feature lively networking, complimentary hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar.

For more information, visit www.TheGreenStandard.org.