Standards & Compliance Briefing: Sustainable Tourism, Green-e Energy, IEC/CIM, ISSC

The Global Sustainable Tourism Council announced four early adopters for its new criteria for destinations – Fjord Norway; Teton County, Wyoming; Mt. Huangshan, China; and St. Kitts & Nevis. The group of destinations will be the first to test and provide feedback on the criteria, which will augment the GSTC’s existing Criteria for Hotels and Tour Operators.

Plymouth Rock Energy’s new renewable energy certificate product, Plymouth Renewables, is now certified by Green-e Energy, joining a network of nearly 300 participating vendors selling over 30 million MWh of renewable electricity, the companies said.

Metering technology provider Elster has successfully completed participation in vendor interoperability testing for the International Electrotechnical Commission/Common Information Model (IEC/CIM), affirming its commitment to implement open standards for Smart Grid applications to run over multiple systems, the company said.

NatureWorks announced that its packaging made from Ingeo biopolymer and sold in Germany by Danone is the first to achieve certification from both the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification Association and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The two standards require compliance with criteria such as prohibiting artificial irrigation in drought-prone areas, strict requirements for pesticide use, and a ban on genetically modified plants, NatureWorks said.

The Consumer Electronics Association, DigitalEurope, and the Japanese Green Procurement Survey Standardization Initiative have released the revised Joint Industry Guide – Material Composition Declaration for Electrotechnical Products – JIG-101 Ed. 4.1, an industry materials declaration guide for electrotechnical products across the global supply chain. This is the final version of the Joint Industry Guide, as the new international IEC 62474 Standard published in March becomes the electrotechnical industry’s material declaration standard, CEA said.

The Convention Centre Dublin has earned its ISO 14001 certification. The facility is supplied with electrical energy generated 100 percent from renewable resources, and it established a target of recycling 85 percent of building waste this year. The CCD also earned ISO 9001 for quality management and the BS7499 British standard for security, through Certification Europe. The three standards were achieved within eighteen months of opening.

Public accounting and consulting firm REDW has earned LEED Gold certification at its new headquarters in Phoenix, Ariz. The two-story, 45,000-square-foot office building gets 26 percent of its energy from a solar array, uses 46 percent less water than a comparable office building and uses 58 percent less energy overall than a non-LEED constructed building, New Mexico Business Weekly said.