The Pharos Lens: a lifecycle labelling tool

The Pharos Project is a graphical green labelling system. In the same spirit as the FDA's nutrition labels, Pharos would go on all building materials. Consumers can look at the label and get a visual indicator of the environmental impact.

A project of the good people at Healthy Building Network, Pharos is very well researched and thought out. The framework they created is very complex, but Lifecycle Assessment is a complex subject.

There are three main categories:
1. Environment-Resource
2. Social-Community
3. Health-Pollution

which are then broken down into specific indicators:

1. Environment-Resource
Water: Net Use
Energy: Embodied
Energy: Renewable
Materials: Renewable

2. Social-Community
User Exposures
Solid Waste
Water Quality
Air Quality
Climate Change
Toxic Releases

3. Health-Pollution
Occupational Safety
Consumer Safety
Fair Compensation
Equality
Community Contributions
Corporate Practices

For an explanation of how the label works, go here for the full label or here for the categories.

Pharos is not the first rating system I have seen to use a graphical display. Reveal, offers a cleaner and numeric system to rate the greeness of materials. I like both of these, but the real test is how normal consumers will react. Which would you use?