GreenSpec teams up with ecoScorecard

Martin Flaherty

BuildingGreen, the Brattleboro-based publisher of the "GreenSpec Directory" and Environmental Building News, May 18 announced a new partnership with Atlanta-based ecoScorecard in which the two databased will cross reference one another when green building products appear in both directories.

The two firms site a growing need to help designers and architects more easily access information about how the products they specify would help a project achieve grcertification.

GreenSpec Directory lists product descriptions for more than 2,000 environmentally preferable products. Products are independently evaluated and rated by the company's editors according to 26 criteria.

ecoScorecard is a Web-based tool that catalogs a manufacturer's environmentally preferable products and provides architects and designers with the documentation necessary to apply those products to environmental rating systems, which include U.S Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Labs 21 and many other third-party certifications.

With this new partnership, products listed in both databases would get linked together, making it easier for designers to choose products based on how well they perform as well as on their "value" according to many rating systems. Both directories are free to registered users.

Companies currently pay a fee to be listed in ecoScorecard's directory, which was launched a year and half ago by Paul Shahriari and Martin Flaherty. The company is already profitable, Flaherty says.

It has has agreements with 22 brands to catalog information on "thousands of products" says Flaherty, who serves as the company's president, and plans to add approximately 50 more by the end of 2009.