A CRITICAL COMPARISON OF SEC GREENLABEL SCHEME WITH WORLDWIDE STANDARDS AND PROPOSED NEW SCHEME FOR BUILDING PRODUCTS IN THE FUTURE

Abstract

With the introduction of the Building and Construction Authority’s (BCA) Green Mark Scheme, Singapore has taken yet another step towards its goal of an environmentally sustainable economy, to preserve our resources for the next generation. Greening the construction industry is but one of the challenges we face in our pursuit of sustainable growth. Eco-labels have been proliferating throughout the world, appearing on everyday products to become more appealing to environmentally conscious consumers. Singapore is no exception. However there exists a niche for the eco-labelling of construction products and materials, which is currently only serviced by the Singapore Environmental Council’s (SEC) Greenlabel Scheme. The aim of this report is to critically evaluate the SEC’s Greenlabel Scheme to find ways to improve on the current eco-labelling program available for construction products and materials, and from the evaluation, propose a new scheme which will better reflect the environmental qualities of the product. This new scheme is aimed at creating a more stringent and rounded approach towards the labeling of products, and differentiating the different environmental performance levels of each product through a tiered system. An extensive literature review was carried out to establish the knowledge required on eco-labelling and sustainable assessment. Through a critical analysis of Singapore’s Greenlabel product grading process for construction products and materials in comparison with international labels, it has been found that the Greenlabel scheme has areas which can be improved. These comparisons were made with respect to product assessment parameters of other labels from USA, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. Shortcomings were typically in the area of Life-Cycle Analysis. After the shortcomings of the current Greenlabel scheme were identified, a new scheme better suited to catering to green construction products was proposed to take the place of the Greenlabel system. Improvements to the scheme include the introduction of a tiered system to identify products which score higher on the “green” assessment, Life-Cycle Analysis of products and a weightage system to categorize the importance of assessment parameters.