LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a set of building project guidelines published by an organization known as the Green Building Council. These are guidelines, not regulations, and have been widely accepted in today’s world of green building and green adhesives. The council publishes several different sets of guidelines depending upon the type of building project. For example, there is a set of guidelines for new building construction, one for building renovation, one for schools and many more. For adhesives, these guidelines tend to focus on the low VOCs in the product, and they ban the use of urea-formaldehyde adhesives in composite wood products.    

The LEED building rating system requires the use of a consultant to help rate a building project for one of four levels of certification (Platinum, Gold, Silver or Certified). LEED offers programs in several areas of building, both commercial and residential. Rating systems & guidelines can be downloaded from www.usgbc.org.

Australia’s Green Building Program

Australia’s Green Building program is known as Green Star. Relatively new and patterned after the European BREEAM and U.S. LEED programs, it is managed by the Australian Green Building Council (AuGBC). It was developed mainly for office buildings but currently has rating systems for residential, schools, and health facilities under development. It works much the same way as LEED. For adhesives (Section IEQ-13), Green Star requires that 95% of the adhesives and sealants used be either low-VOC or low-emitting and that composite woods have low formaldehyde levels.  

Other countries currently developing green building rating systems include: 

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Israel, Korea, Nigeria, Panama, Philippines, Switzerland, Turkey and Vietnam.