Interview with David Baggs about Global GreenTag International and What Makes it Unique

Hello everyone, my name is Ian Peterman, host of Conscious Design Podcast, and today I'm excited to have David Baggs, co-founder of Global Green Tag International, here as a guest. Welcome to the show.

Thanks, Ian. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, so we've You guys, I found you guys, uh, and looking for companies that are trying to make a difference and, and looking at sustainability and your guys's approach, I haven't found anybody else doing what you're doing really, or the way that you're doing it. Um, so tell us a little bit about, you know, what is you guys, you know, certified products, you, you do that, but you didn't start, that wasn't your— initial foray into this. So tell us a little about what you do now and then we can talk about how you got here.

Okay. Well, at its simplest level, we do sort of deep scientific dives into the detail of products, whether that's health, whether it's sustainability, whether it's ethical supply chains and modern slavery. We do deep incredibly detailed dives into the depths of products and the supply chains, and then take that information and turn it into usable either reporting or sort of eco-label type marks with rating out, like tiered rated outcomes, so that instead of just seeing something with an eco-label on it and you go, oh, that's, you know, certified or it's not, you can go, well, this is certified, it's a better product, or it's an excellent product, or it's a world-leading product. You can actually make a choice as to how good. And sometimes that comes with extra cost, sometimes it doesn't. In fact, a lot of the times it doesn't. And that's the thing that sort of what we do helps turn the common narrative about sustainability always costing more on its head, because we can show you and demonstrate via the marks that you've got all these products that are in the market competing with one another on cost. One of them might be bronze, one of them might be silver, one of them might be platinum. So it gives the industry information on which to base its purchasing and specifying decisions, but do it very easily and without costing themselves time or effort to understand anything more than a tiered outcome or how to read a report, transparency report.

Right. Now, I think we talked about you have 6 different metrics that you use, correct?

Within our LCO. So we have a range of different certification services, each of which relates to a credit requirement in one of the major rating tools, and then some which actually just stand by themselves to help end users understand or, you know, understand the product or help manufacturers tell a story about sustainability that they can't really talk about any other way because sustainability is complex, no doubt about it.

Yeah, it might be the most complex things we're trying to do.

And there's lots of different heads of consideration And to boil that down into a bronze, silver, gold, or platinum LCA rate is something that anybody can get their head around. But we then said, well, yeah, but some people need deeper information. So then the 6 criteria within LCA rate, which is just one of our services, the 6 criteria within LCA rate each has a score. And that score is normalized against the business as usual worst-case comparison. So something that does the— performs the same function in the same market and is commonly used as a competitor against the product we're certifying. And we do a market survey and we figure out which is the worst-case commonly used product, and everything that performs that same function gets compared against that product. So you literally can ask what's the most sustainable flooring, and using our metrics, actually be able to compare rubber flooring, ceramic flooring, cork flooring, vinyl flooring, any kind of carpet, whatever, any kind of carpet against the other products that are certified in the market because they've all been compared to the same benchmark product. So you literally can, you know, in a concept like flooring, often the thing that takes over the lifecycle impacts of the product are how much cleaning and maintenance it needs. So it needs daily cleaning and maintenance, then, like carpet does a lot of the time.

Right.

The cleaning component actually takes over and becomes the dominant factor. So if you ignore that, you only do what's called a cradle-to-gate assessment, and you finish the assessment at the gates of the manufacturing plant, you miss that completely. So we do a whole-of-life assessment. And so you literally can ask the question, what's the most sustainable flooring, and get an answer that is actually scientifically valid. So that's kind of, that's our anchor certification. That was our original starting point in the market. We then developed a concept called GreenRate, which is specifically designed for a particular rating tool in Australia, Green Star, which is now in New Zealand and now in Africa as well. So it's recognized by multiple schemes, including, you know, US Green Globes and those sorts of more inclusive sorts of rating systems. So there's a whole ecosystem of capability that GreenRate delivers, but it is not a lifecycle analysis-based system. Then we have our Product Health Declaration. Product Health Declaration, it's like a health product declaration, or, you know, a declare, inasmuch as it tells you what's in the product and attaches the hazard statements that are required under the GHS, the Globally Harmonized System, so that you can tell which ingredients flag which health or environmental toxicity concerns. But those systems leave the whole industry, you know, having to figure out for themselves what to do with that information. Like, there's these red flags coming up, or, you know, I've got no banned ingredients, but what about the rest? You know, are there, are there, are the risks relevant to the end user? Do they, do those risks even exist in the end product? So attached with our product health declaration, we have a health threat assessment, which Transparency by using risk analysis actually looks at what happens to worker health. Are the workers exposed to those risks? Does the factory create environmental conditions around it that exposes the environment to that risk? Yes, no. What does it do to mitigate those risks? And we go through all of that with the factory and figure out, you know, what that looks like for each of those red flags. And then we come to the end piece and look at, well, what about the in-use healthiness for that product?

Right.

Once you've combined all the ingredients together, what happens? You know, like when you mix stuff together, you get a chemical reaction. Those chemical reactions often, you know, in fact, usually these days completely eliminate those red flags. So the big red flags that get raised in these other transparency systems don't actually exist in the final product. And to me, that's like, as an architect, I go, yeah, but that's really what my client's interested in, right?

The person in the building doesn't care because it's not impacting them. It does— it's not— well, unless—

or it does, unless it is, yes.

Or if it does, or it's worse, right? And I guess that's always possible too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, you know, or, you know, potentially even does the product break down over time and create dust or whatever, you know, like there's a There's a whole kind of assessment process to look at, is to make sure that we actually know what risks exist, if any. And then we take that a step further, and we've got a list of ingredients from the US Association of Occupational Environmental Consultants that, um, there's over 1,300 compounds which we then screen the product for to give an asthma an allergen sensitivity mark or claim. So we, so, you know, from a health point of view, you've got the evidence that you need to, you know, be compliant with WELL or compliant with LEED or, you know, any other rating system that's looking at ingredient hazard transparency. We've eliminated, you know, a variety of banned compounds, all of the worst that those systems require. And then we've looked at, well, at what threshold does the presence of this compound become a health threat? And it may be that the best, the best of science says, well, at this level, um, it's okay. And we look at the product and go, well, is it in the product at that level or below? Yes. Okay, well, it's got a toxic compound in it, so it's not going to get a high rating, but it's deemed by best science of today to be healthy, so we'll— it can have a bronze assessment. Or, you know, so Bronze Health. So ultimately everything that we certify is healthy to the best known science. And then the further up the ladder you go, the less we rely on science and just the presence means that the product is clean. If you've got a Platinum rated product, then it's clean of dangerous chemicals of any kind.

Right.

Yeah, you know, to our known threshold, which is, you know, 100 parts per million.

Right, right. There's a certain point where you can't measure anymore and it's unknown.

Well, because, because the regulatory systems actually only ask, um, manufacturers to declare to 1,000 parts per million, sometimes it is hard. It really is hard to get that kind of information at 100 parts per million. But yeah, it can be, it can be challenging, but we most of the time manage to do it. And when we can't, well, we can't certify something.

Right. Well, you mentioned something earlier, we were talking about flooring, you mentioned thinking about the cleaning process. So that's, that's something that a lot of people don't think about. The most, most rating systems that I know of in product development or elsewhere, they look at You know, how, how good is the material until you make, you know, whatever product, but not looking at how much cleaning are you going to have to do to maintain it. And after you, you know, run a vacuum over your carpet, does it, does it cause a problem? Do your cleaning solutions that you use cause problems? So there's, there's that extra layer, which I think is great you guys are doing because it's, it's just not We say life cycle, but we kind of a lot of times cut it short and look at, well, it exited the manufacturer just fine, so we're good now. And then we, we ignore the fact that there's an entire life cycle after that, that if it takes 100 times more to clean it, is it really sustainable compared to something else? And that's—

Which doesn't— yeah, exactly. And, and, you know, and, and it's, it's not just about cleaning. Sometimes it's about literally about Well, you know, if it's a piece of equipment, can it be serviced? Is it a sealed item that at the end of its life, if it's a throwaway or—

Right. Repairability.

Repairability. And it's not just about repairability, it's about other spare parts available. Can you buy the spare parts? Right.

Just because you can—

And for how long? Exactly. So we, you know, those are the things that we look at. and including the end-of-life componentry because something that has spare parts availability is repairable, has a manufacturer repair network, or even better, a non-OEM repair network that has— that can buy the spare parts from the manufacturer, which is, you know, basically sort of where the right to repair movement is heading. Right. You know, wanting makers and repairers to be able to access the parts from the OEM manufacturer to do the repairs without having to come through the, you know, sort of, you know, OEM repair gateway and pay higher prices and, you know, have no competition and all that sort of stuff. So we actually look at those and we'll ascribe a longer life to the product as a result, you know, at the end of life impact assessment. Which then sort of lowers the average per year impact of the product. So basically it gets proper recognition for durability, repairability, recyclability, and all of the, you know, sort of the things that start feeding then into the circular economy type issues.

Right. Well, that's— and that's a key part of if you're trying to build a circular economy, it's not just now, it's over the time, right? It's, it's, if your product lasts 20 years instead of 18, then it's more, that's more sustainable version just, just by being able to last longer than, yeah, yeah, yeah, than the shorter time.

It takes exactly the same energy to make the products. It's just a little bit better design, but a bit better thinking, um, right? Maybe you've got a slightly thicker wire in the, you know, in the machine. Maybe there's a little bit of extra robustness in them, in the materials that are there, but it's incremental compared to what happens if something lasts 2 years or 20.

Right, right. It's— it can be a small change with a large, large impact.

Exactly. And I mean, you know, when it comes to things like that, we actually look at whether something— if something's made out of plastic, whether it has the recycling marks on the plastic. Which actually costs nothing. At some point it will cost a fraction of a fraction, you know, to put the mark in the dye, but once the mark's in the dye, it literally costs nothing. But without that mark, you literally cannot recycle the plastic except into something like road bitumen or something, where, as a colleague of mine who invented a technology for turning plastics and toner into bitumen He calls the stuff that he puts into his bitchin' mixtures the mongrel mix.

Right, it's all the stuff no one will accept because they don't know what it is.

Exactly.

Yeah. Now, we talked before a little bit on your journey of how you got here. You didn't start with— well, you did some research and people kept asking you. So I would love for you to Tell that story a bit about how you got here, because it's, it's, uh, I thought it was quite interesting.

Well, you know, as you know, professionally I'm an architect and I worked in the green building sector, and the kinds of buildings I was working in meant I had to actually have a deep understanding of materials and the products to make sure that the buildings work. Like, I started off in earth-covered buildings, uh, went to earth wall, compressed earth block walls, straw bale. And, you know, there's— you really have to understand at a, at a chemico-physical-electrico level, like with a, with a, an earth wall, you have to understand the electric charges attached to clay to understand why a building has to get wet to stay dry. Okay, so to think about building materials at that level meant that I was sort of deeply embroiled in products even as an architect and thinking in those lines. Then we had the Olympics in Sydney in 2000, and in 1995, the Olympic Coordination Authority put out this list of requirements for a thing called an ecologically sustainable development consultant. And I'm like, what's that? And I looked at the list. Oh, I do that, I do that, I do that, I do that. Oh, maybe I can apply for this. And long story short, I was involved with 10 of the Olympic Games venues as a sustainability, energy, and materials consultant, sometimes even media liaison. But ultimately what it meant was, as it came out of the Olympics post-2000, my new partner who was sitting there in the office one day, she said, what are you— what are we doing with all that information that you, you know, on products that you developed for the Olympics. I like— we're using it in our projects. And she said to me, Mary Lou said to me, Mary Lou Kelly said, it's too important to be sitting on our shelves. We really need to get this stuff out. I was like, it took me, you know, probably about 48 hours to go, oh yes, I know. Yeah, yeah, okay. You know, long story short, we developed a concept called EcoSpecifier, which was to verify manufacturers' claims about the health and environmental aspects of their products, and then to ensure that they were healthy products from a toxicity and environmental— human and environmental toxicity point of view. And we would be sitting on shows promoting our EcoSpecifier database of verified products. And people would start saying to us, do you certify? And we go, no, no, we only verify manufacturers' claims. And they would wander off. And it started happening so often, I started saying, why are you asking? And their response inevitably was, and I won't mention the name of the exact company, but well, because I hate X, which was another eco-label certifier in our market at the time. And then we went, oh, that's interesting. And then we heard that so many times, we started asking, why do you hate them so much?

This is a trend. Can you tell us why?

We literally heard it, you know, 40-odd, you know, 30 or 40 or maybe even 50 times. And so we started paying attention. And by the time we got to the end of the 50th, we had this long, you know, this list of what not to do as a, you know, as a product certifier and how to deal with ourselves. So that the clients would not be upset with us. So we actually decided to, in 2010, we decided to launch a certification system and called it Global Green Tag, more as a statement of intent than a reality at the time, being global. And—

You got to start somewhere.

Yeah, exactly. And we set out to make, because also along the way, people would say to us, even as verifiers, Yeah, but who checks you? Who checks the checker? How do we know that you are honest and unbiased and truly independent? Because, you know, the manufacturers pay you to do the work, right? So like, well, yeah, they do. So we determined that we had to develop a business model that meant that we could, we were under— you know, not What's the actual— irreproachable, unreproachable. Anyway, we could not— it was obvious that the way things were structured, there was no way that undue influence could be exerted on us. So when manufacturers deal with us, they pay 100% of the fee upfront before we lift a finger. So that way they can't be using the financial issue as a lever. We also work within the ISO 14024 third-party eco-label standard, and we get externally verified as compliant to that standard. Likewise, ISO 17065, which is the conformance assessment body standard, we have DNV, who is a, you know, an international third-party certifier, certify us. So we have a 3-tier certification where we have others come in and check what we do is what we say we do, that we do certify products according to our own standards as well as external standards. We do comply with the Type 1 Ecolabel certification requirements and we do comply with the conformance assessment body standards. So we have ISO 9001, 14024, and 17065 external certification verification. So we basically set that up to make sure that when someone says to us, well, how do we trust you? I said, well, you don't have to trust us. You can trust the fact that here's the certificates, which is what we're really asking our own clients to do for the industry is to set themselves up as— Having been verified as a trustworthy source of information. That's really the base of it.

Because you're being that third party.

Well, yes. The problem is greenwash has become so prolific and so endemic in the industry that users and architects and clients just don't know what to believe. And so the level of trust around manufacturer claims has just dropped. And so, you know, it does require some sort of verification to rebuild that trust.

Right. Yeah, I think you're putting it very nicely. It's— trust has been destroyed quite a bit by the greenwashing in all kinds of industries. It's Even I was talking to somebody in the— that's all they do is branding for, you know, social, social-first brands. And that's something that they're running into is you— they have to work very hard and very carefully to make sure they don't look like they're just making up stuff. They have to be very intentional because it's across the board. There's just so much of that. It's It's hard. And honestly, it's really almost impossible as a consumer without the resources to do that kind of research. I mean, I can't imagine how many hours you guys have spent doing what you've done. And if I were to try to do that myself, you've been doing it for a decade. So I can only imagine how long it would take me.

Well, you would never do it.

Right.

I mean, in the early days, you know, I had that experience. You know, I was designing healthy buildings because I had a client with chronic fatigue syndrome came to me and said, we want to design a chemical-free building. I was like, well, there's no such thing because every product is made of chemicals. So what you have to do is to understand what chemical sensitivities of that client were. And ultimately, you're in a situation where you ring a manufacturer up and say, I need to know what's in your plaster setting compounds because I've got an unhealthy client who is allergic to things which she can't have in her house. You know, at one point I took a 1-inch cube of pine, just kiln-dried pine, into her bedroom, and it took her 3 days to recover. I mean, I did it with her permission to test it, but it was just on the other side of the room. But it literally, you know, she had a terpene allergy, and the terpenes in pine, even just a 1-inch cube, uh, the other side of the room, was enough to actually, you know, shut her immune system down for 3 days. So, you know, there are some very sensitive individuals out there, and, you know, you can do your best to try and mitigate against that level of sensitivity, but in the end, you know, you can't guarantee it. It's just not possible because the levels of sensitivity can be so low that, you know, literally science can't track it, you know. But so, you know, effectively, they would say to us, yeah, no, go away, it's commercial in confidence. Now, interestingly enough, that was a real experience. Interestingly enough, when we got into the Olympics, that same company was sitting across the other side of the table on one of the major projects. And this was pre-bid, pre-tender, and what they wanted to be in the bid is, you know, if we win the bid, we're in the project. So, okay, that's fine. But you're gonna have to tell us what's in your products. And they looked across the table at me and said, what would you like to know, Mr. Baggs? Not run away, go away, but what would you like to know? And so that was a lesson. It was like, okay, so this is not about confidentiality, it's about leverage.

Yeah.

And because of who we are and what we are and what we do, we have the leverage. And we can get in, we can get access to that information. You know, we signed confidentiality agreements, no question. We've got this, you know, amazing, you know, security and stuff around the information that we hold.

Right, of course.

You know, levels of security and full encryption. And, you know, basically we have probably better security than most government departments. It's not saying anything.

Well, and that's, and that's important. That's an important piece is you've now, you're now sitting in that leverage point where you have that and you're able to go, we'd like to know, and then they'll pay you. They'll pay you to find out what they do or what they make and how they make it, which is, yeah, like you're saying.

We are often telling manufacturers more about their products than they know themselves. Yes.

That's— that— I don't know if I should be concerned about that, with— if you don't know what's in your own products. Uh, that's a— I guess it's a process, right?

Yeah, well, I mean, at the end of the day, sometimes they haven't looked at it from the point of view we're looking at it, so it's not really all that surprising because, you know, like, as in the case of modern slavery, it's just coming to people's attentions and You know, in the case of toxicity, the rules are changing all the time. You know, up until a few years ago, borax was something you used to use in the laundry, and, you know, you'd use it for insects, you know, put it around the floorboards and in your cupboards. And, and now it's a known endocrine disruptor. So, you know, the science changes, right? You know, and stuff we think was harmless actually turns out not to be harmless, and in quite insidious ways sometimes. Yeah.

Right, that's a good point. It is, it isn't ever changing. And, and you have, you have the database now too, which means you can probably more effectively go through and say, oh well, new— that today's science says, oh, borax is bad, um, let's update. And be able to, be able to more effectively and quickly update your database than somebody else trying to figure it all out because you're able to go, oh well, all of these products have borax. Here we go. There's— yeah, here's the rating change.

Yeah, borax or its derivatives, or, you know, boracic acid, and there's a whole stream of things like— right, you know, and, and sometimes it actually does get to a point where, you know, with things like, um, you know, PFAS, the, the, the sort of, um, anti-stain type compounds, and that are also in fire retardants and flame, you know, the fire foam and that sort of stuff that's become such a big issue. And, you know, or, and, and is present in things like, you know, the early non-stick pans. And so people become aware that, you know, on heating those non-stick pans, there's a, um, over, you know, 300 degrees, there's a, there's a breakdown product that is given off, and, and there's a health impact in that. So, so go, oh well, we won't use that You know, PFAS anymore. Here's one that doesn't contain that breakdown product, and they shift one or two molecules to the left or to the right. So now there's, you know, like over 200 PFAS compounds. So you've got to know which one you're asking about, because those nonstick pans are actually potentially, you know, quite problematic health-wise. And I'd be, you know, there's probably some out there that, you know, call them stealth stoneware or whatever, but because you can't trust them to kind of just move one or two to the left or to the right, I just, I don't. I use cast iron, I use enamel, or I use stainless steel. It's nothing else, you know.

That's what we do. It's easier than trying to figure out which Which nonstick are you using? Because it's not like they put it on the box. They don't know.

And sometimes, you know, what, what you actually do understand in this, in this business, and as an ex-politician, you know, people really, you know, they're quite happy to sometimes just do what's easy and makes their life convenient. As long as the dangers aren't just, you know, hitting them in the face, they are, people are prepared to look the other way. Uh, in some instances. So, you know, unless one of the fry pan manufacturers comes to us and says, well, here's our— here's what we do, and, you know, here are the compounds that we're using, and we've been able to go through them on an individual basis, we— that, you know, we just wouldn't put ourselves in a position of knowingly ingesting those compounds.

Right. Now, as far as your focus is primarily in architectural materials, but how far are you? Are you wanting to get into, you know, certifying frying pans so we know which one is good to use? Or kind of where do you see it now and in the future? Where do you want to grow to?

Well, we actually have— excuse me— we actually have 3 standards. We have a building products, interiors products, and infrastructure products standard. We We have a cleaning product standard which includes things like rodenticides and insecticides. And we have a personal product standard which includes things like hand sanitizers and makeup and anything that you would be putting on your body or in your body, which does not have a health claim. And that's an important distinction. Once we get into products that claim to have healthy health outcomes, then that goes into the range of a medical compound and requires FDA or Therapeutic Goods Administration type approvals. Then we would just, if we were certifying a good like that, we would be insisting on those FDA approvals or those therapeutic goods approval certification before we would touch the product. But look, pretty much we can do anything, but we choose not to get into the, you know, sort of food area or to some extent the sort of fast-moving consumer goods sector because what we do takes a lot of science and a lot of depth. And if you do all that work and then next week the supply chain changes, you've got to do a lot of it again. So, you know, where you've got those really fast cycle products like we probably wouldn't get into fast-moving fashion, but we would potentially and could and have looked at getting into slow fashion, for instance.

Got it.

You know, so basically we're looking for relatively stable supply chains and anything because with the model of looking at what the benchmark performance of a worst-case performing product is and then looking at the product itself, we actually have a system by which to compare, you know, good, better, best world-leading practice. So ultimately, and this, you know, with our product health declarations, we— and health rate and asthma and allergen, you know, we can do all of that. So it's really more about what parts of the market are looking for that kind of information is really the more— sort of relevant question for us. So we'll— we can pretty much do anything. It's just a matter of whether we have the metrics and the data points to do it.

Right.

And, you know, that sort of, you know, brings us probably to that part of the conversation where we go, well, the market is moving into concepts like circular economy, and it is moving into regenerative and restorative sustainability practices as the, you know, let's get past carbon net zero, let's go to carbon zero, and then let's go to, uh, carbon or climate positive, uh, results where we're starting to take back some of the impacts that we've already made, uh, and ease the burden on nature and try and work with nature to help restore ecosystems that have already been degraded. to the point where nature can be self-regenerating. So we, you know, move it from being an impact to be a collaborator, to be a facilitator and supporter of natural regeneration processes. And of course, then we run into this problem where the best system that we have to measure product impacts is a thing called life cycle analysis, as we've already talked about. But lifecycle analysis has an inherent impact assessment focus, so it's looking at the negatives. So the best that conventional lifecycle practice can deliver is a close to zero or zero sort of number, and that means we've reduced the impacts of the product towards zero or to zero, but it doesn't have metrics that allow it to go past zero into restorative and regenerative and multiple life products. So, you know, if, if someone said to me, give me an EPD for a tree, an Environmental Product Declaration, or do me an LCA for a tree, the traditional conventional life cycle analysis doesn't have the metrics. Can't do it.

It's going in the wrong direction on the chart. It doesn't— it can't end well.

Exactly, exactly. You know, what negative impacts does a tree have?

I can't think of any.

On the other hand, it does generate soil carbon. It does generate oxygen. It does break down waste from other plants and reuse them as nutrients. You know, so there's this whole whole scope of impacts that are positive, which currently lifecycle impact doesn't cover. So our technical LCA partners, EBA Institute, and us have worked together and for the last 6 or 7 years been working with and developing— developed and working with lifecycle benefit analysis indicators. Where, for instance, instead of looking at photochemical pollution emissions, we are looking at oxygen generation potential. Instead of looking at disability-adjusted life years, which is the metric for health impacts, we look at health-adjusted life years. Instead of DALYs, it's HALYs.

Right.

We basically have created a set using the same concepts And metrics, we've developed countermetrics where you can look at negatives and positive and put them together to make a full picture of when you take a product and which is a waste, then you upcycle it, you're creating positive outcomes as well as negatives. So, you know, this is the sort of metrics that you need when you're measuring circular economy benefits or circular economy impacts and benefits, or when you're indeed putting a green roof on a building or a green wall in a building, or doing a soil carbon improvement on a large site with a relatively small building on it. You can do a lot of things in the context of a project that will have a beneficial environmental impact? And if you haven't got a metric to measure it, how are you going to keep up with that?

Well, you can't make— you can't do a cost— it's like trying to do a cost-benefit analysis without a benefit part. It doesn't actually tell you what you're getting for doing anything. So that's— it kind of makes I know when you first mentioned that as a— I hadn't thought about it, but it's so true. It's impossible to actually make a decision then because you're not actually looking at any of the positives. And if we're gonna make any attempt at regenerative or carbon negative, then we have to be looking at what is it doing positively as well in order to counterbalance as to why.

Yeah.

'Cause I mean, hopefully that will be— we'll be looking at mostly the positive end And instead of looking at comparing, well, which one's the least worst, we'll be looking at which one's the best and changing that conversation, which is—

Exactly. Exactly.

Thinking about it, like that's, if that's the core conversation happening is which one is the least bad. Like that's, that's something that nobody, nobody should start a conversation with. If that's the goal is which one's the least worst, that's That's not really an outcome anybody really wants. That's not a— that's right, we should be having—

that's right, right.

We're starting, we're starting with the wrong conversation. So, uh, hopefully, yeah, hopefully that catches on. Hopefully you can convince the world to, to look through that lens and stop starting with a lose— losing.

Yeah, well, 10 years ago I started talking about restorative sustainability, and, and when we did, when I developed LCA rate The scoring for LCA rate goes from +1 to -1. So with all of those 6 indicators that go up to make LCA rate, including life cycle analysis, 1 is normalized to the worst— to the performance of the worst performing benchmark product that's commonly available, and 0 is a neutral impact, and -1 Remember, we're talking impact terms here now, minus 1. So minus some minus and minus impact is a positive. So we basically— a minus score is a positive outcome. So even, you know, 10 years ago, our entire system was set up to, to recognize that. Um, and then about, um, 5 years ago, we actually started publishing EPDs with an additional section in the back which not only gives the life cycle impact assessment scores but also the life cycle benefit scores. So, you know, we have been putting this information out there, but it's only literally, you know, sort of probably a year ago I first saw this realization come out of a call from one of the European life cycle analysis associations. to get the industry together and talk about this. We've done peer-reviewed papers at European conferences going back 6 and 7 years, and it's like the concept in Australia, they talk about when the European settlers came to Australia, they declared it terra nullius. It's like empty land. So it's like no one's ever done any of this kind of work in the LCA profession before, except we've got peer-reviewed papers in European journals. Talking about it, and it's like, I know, we, you know, we're gonna just engage the whole— like, it's like nothing has— nothing happened, but we've been doing it for 6 or 7 years.

Wow. Well, hopefully, hopefully it doesn't take them too much longer for it to get through that it's, it's been happening and, and start using it, because it's— it seems like a no-brainer now. As soon as you said it, it's like, well, Why, why not? Why, why are we not doing this? Like, why did— why didn't we think of this sooner as a standard for our conversation?

As an organization, we don't— we sort of— we do a lot to engage. Like, it, it took us 10 years to get recognized by, by LEED. It took us—

that's a long time.

It took us 13 weeks to get recognized by WELL. It takes like 6 weeks or 10 weeks to get recognized in local rating systems here. So ultimately, we are tenacious and we do try and make those kind of outward journeys to try and sort of push what we do in front of the world. But in the end, if we, you know, we, we just go ahead and do it anyway because as we have been proven right on multiple occasions now, the industry eventually realizes what it needs. And we, we've been doing it for, you know, for a long enough time for there to be quite a database of that relevant information. Like, again, we're the first people as far as we're aware globally to do a product-level modern slavery declaration. Everything else right across the world is done at a corporate level. But if I'm a builder and I'm saying to a manufacturer, I've got to do, as a, you know, as a tier 1 builder, I've got to do a modern slavery statement and it has to be at a corporate level. But I've got a 10,000 product procurement portfolio and I asked one of those manufacturers, hey, I buy flooring from you and that manufacturer does flooring and does ceilings and, you know, has an offshoot that is in plastic moldings and over there is maybe even doing windows and I asked them about the flooring product that I'm buying and they go, oh, we've done a corporate modern slavery report that covers all of our supply chains, here it is. Like, what use is that to me as the builder who's buying your, you know, buying the flooring?

Right.

I can't aggregate that information and turn it into something that is usable for me because it's not about the product. I want something which is at the product level. Which I can then use to aggregate my story into my corporate. So, you know, it's like the industry hasn't woken up to the need because it actually isn't doing this stuff properly yet. But, you know, no, that's— once it's really useful, once it realizes what it's gonna— what it actually needs, the information will, you know, hopefully Be there.

That's, you know, yeah, well, it's amazing. And I, I think that more people in my profession should be using, utilizing your, your database of materials at the very least, because it's in product design and development, it's very, very much needed, like that, that database. And like you're saying, in order to certify, if you want to claim your new product, like You won't certify, you know, a fast-moving product. But if I could say, well, all the components that we use come from certified suppliers and the materials, then it still can help elevate even faster turnaround products that are, like you say, you know, here today and gone, replaced tomorrow, can still help that. 'Cause that's still, we spend a lot of time there, unfortunately.

Yeah, look, the reality, when I say we don't do it, it is like we don't focus on it. It's not something we go out and try and win business. If a manufacturer is interested in working with us in that area, we can modify the sorts of things that we do to actually create a tool for them with generic— more a little bit of generic information so that we can create a lifecycle tool will allow them to actually sort of analyze their own supply chains, even though it might not be, you know, to the level of detail we would normally do. We can actually give them sort of hotspot type analysis, or we can, you know, provide them with their own sort of dedicated tool to be able to figure out whether they should be using this raw material or that raw material, or where the best country or region is to buy it, you know, like This is— and this is the thing that sort of people really don't understand. If I want to buy aluminium, I don't want to buy it from a company— sorry, for— well, either from a company or a country where their predominant fuel source is brown coal or even coal. I want to buy aluminium from a country where the grid is mostly renewables or hydro. And those countries and those regions and those states exist. So, you know, if, if a manufacturer's got this product, says, oh, you know, I'm not going to do that because my product's aluminium and, you know, I know aluminium's like liquid energy, why would we bother even doing that work? It's like, yeah, but, you know, we can help you, we can help direct you to where you can buy that aluminium so it comes with zero carbon and the lowest possible impact. So those are the sorts of purchasing and directions, because the work that we do looks at literally the energy grids of not just countries, but regions within those countries. Right. Yeah.

The energy grid isn't across an entire country. Look at the US. We are by no means one energy grid.

Well, it's really interesting because one of the things that becomes obvious to us as another country that fracks for gas is that as we frack more for gas and as the fugitive methane emissions from that process become more well known, our national grid stats are getting worse. And other countries that aren't doing that kind of fracking and are going down the renewables pathways are getting significantly better. And what our politicians and the people approving these processes think they're, you know, doing at one level, they're actually doing the opposite. They're actually putting our countries at a real, you know, in a problematic position because as the transparency of these things becomes more and more clear, And more and more important, our countries are going to become the second-tier go-tos, not the first-tier go-tos, because our electricity grids are so dirty because they've got fracked gas or oil sand gas or fuel or oil in the supply chains that get counted in the national statistics.

Well, it just goes to show, and this is something I try to explain to clients when they're like, oh, we want to have a green product. I'm like, well, do you know all of the impacts? Like, that's— it's not just the material, it's how are the people being treated around it? How is the environment around the manufacturing plant? How's— and, you know, energy grid is not It's not something anybody first thinks about. Well, how do I, how does the factory power itself? And what creates the power that they then use? And that, like, that just, it's such a long, more complicated conversation, but it's one that we have to have and ignoring it is why we're here. Like, that's the honest truth.

Yeah.

We've been ignoring it and we've been, oh, well, it's power. Power is power. And aluminum's aluminum. Why does it matter where or who or how? And yet all those things very much impact the overall—

Absolutely. And the thing is that, you know, as science changes, like, who'd ever thought that, you know, we— a lot of people slag off on China, right? We would not be able to get ourselves out of this climate change problem If it hadn't been for China, Germany triggered it by mandating photovoltaics in its domestic market, and it created a market that meant that China got interested, realized what it could do. Technology coming in from Australia and other places helped China. But you know, give China the you know the the the the credit it deserves from a point of view. Someone in the Chinese autocracy said, this is what we're going to do, and we're going to pour billions and billions and billions of dollars into setting up photovoltaic factories, which 10, 20 years later mean that the world, you know, solar photovoltaics are now the cheapest form of power on the planet, and we can do something about climate change. And as an architect 20 years ago or 30 years ago, my advice to clients was, we've got to get you off electricity. and onto gas and some photovoltaics and solar hot water. Now it's like, we've got to get you off gas. We've got to get you off all sort of power sources and get you back onto electricity because now we can so cheaply generate renewables and with batteries—

Right.

Do it 24 hours a day. And we want all electric houses now. Because we don't— you know, it used to be that we'd hit petroleum and there'd be gas on the top and we'd have to get rid of the gas and that came off, you know, and if we captured it and used it, well, that was a good thing. But then when we decided, oh no, we're going to get gas from fracking— gas is not the clean source of the way it's produced today. It's not the clean source of energy we sort of— it gets— Yeah.

Clean, clean, clean fuel is an oxymoron. Is the right term for that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is really exciting. I'm really happy you guys exist and hopefully you become more popular in the US and other countries and people start waking up to all of these impacts and utilizing your guys' system to identify, oh, this is why we should not buy in this country or this place because all of these factors that we need to be aware of. We really have to be doing that. So yeah, I really appreciate you having some time to talk about all this and share.

Thanks, Ian.

It's been wonderful learning from you and hopefully everyone else will will learn a ton from this. Uh, where anybody that wants to get a hold of you guys, work with you, what's the best way to get a hold of you and, and work with you?

Yeah, so there's a— on our globalgreentag.us or .com websites, there's a Get Certified, and there's a contact with contact details on those websites that they can, they can access us via. And, um, Those contacts would be welcome, and we often even talk directly to architects and consumers who have particular comments. It's not something we are overly well set up to do, but we do it anyway because I just can't say no.

Well, input is good, and sometimes you need it from designers and the users, right? It's It's good to hear it straight from the people actually using something, what they think.

So, because, you know, the thing is that, you know, I am a practicing architect, and I still am in the industry working. And the team that we have is, you know, full of postgrads and doctorates. And, you know, we've got a really great team, not just in Australia, but globally, including our, you know, US CEO, Daniel Hewitt. So he's, you know, involved in, in the lead-in as well. He's on the, you know, deeply involved in those systems. So obviously through the US site, you can reach out to him as well.

Perfect. Well, the— your links and everything will be in the description for, for the episode. So Everyone should check you out. And again, thank you so much. I really appreciate you having time to be on the show. It was great chatting with you.

Thanks, Richard. Appreciate it. Great talking to you.

You too.