If we look at what guidance is the market currently offering us when it comes to choosing healthy building materials. During face-to-face seminars, I like to ask the question and am then relatively surprised at how thin, i.e. how few answers actually come back. Guidance still seems to be a big question mark.

However, there are still a whole lot of corresponding certificates. You can also say that there is a wide range of labels that list excellent materials accordingly. But perhaps that is already one of the problems that still exist, that the very list of certificates that is currently available on the market today. Has already grown so big and long that starts alphabetically with certificates, labels such as Active House, goes through the certainly very well-known Blue Angel, Blue Design, Breeam, Cradle to Cradle, DGNB sitting here in Stuttgart, the Eco Institute, EPDs, Fairtrade, FSC, Green Label Plus, the Green Button to Leed, Öko-Tex, RAL Quality Mark, Sentinel House et cetera et cetera. The list could now be broken down for a very, very long time.

I would just like to briefly pick out a few examples here. From the Blue Angel, DGNB, FSC to Sentinel House, these labels offer initial guidelines as a tool for healthy construction. 2012 Active House, 2014 WELL Building Standard, 2014 Active Plus. Even with the time intervals alone, you can see that in recent years the various awards for entire buildings, the times when new labels came onto the market, are becoming ever more likely to suggest that the quantity here is increasing rather than getting smaller.

I regard this as still a big advantage right now, because all these different labels have different concepts, how do they certify buildings accordingly. Which aspects play a role in this? And they show to a certain extent how great the variety is, much more than just green. Once it starts with the transport route, the energy it contains, goes into concepts that are all considered here at these major labels.