Scope and corrections

What this is, and what it is not

It is a register of requirements read out of the published documents of green building credentials, kept with the page each one came from, and addressable a single clause at a time.

It is not any of these.

• Advice. Nothing here tells you what to specify, or whether a product suits your project. That judgement is yours and your client's, and it needs more than paperwork.
• A certification or a verification. This site certifies nothing, verifies nothing and determines no one's compliance with anything.
• A substitute for the source document. Where the register and the document disagree, the document governs. Please tell us.
• A claim about any product. The register holds what documents require. It holds nothing about what a given product achieves.
• Endorsed by the schemes it covers. No scheme owner has reviewed, approved or authorised this register, and appearing here is not a relationship with us.

Where the words come from

Requirements are read by machine out of documents the schemes publish themselves. Each stored requirement carries a fidelity grade recording how close it stays to the words on the page, and rows the pipeline is unsure of are flagged for review and counted in the open rather than quietly dropped. How it's built carries the current figures for both.

Two things follow from that, and they are the reason this page exists. A machine reading fails in ways a careful person would not, which is why every clause carries the document and page it was read from, so you can check it against the source yourself. And the register is only ever as current as its last build, which is dated at the foot of every page.

Six things this site will not do

These are not house style. They are the rules the interface is built to keep, and most of them are held in place by the test suite rather than by good intentions.

• A blank is never shown as nothing. Where a document does not record something, the page says it is not recorded. It never renders a dash, an empty cell or the word none. Those three all invite you to read absence in the document as absence in the world.
• We never say a scheme has no requirement. We say what the register holds. A scheme with nothing in view says why it has nothing in view. Silence in a register is a fact about the register.
• Licensed text is never shown. Where a document's terms do not allow republication, the page gives the clause, the page number and a link instead of the words, and says that is what it is doing. Showing only the part relevant to one product does not change this.
• What you enter is never merged with what the register holds. A figure you type carries no citation, and every other figure here traces to a document and a page. Yours is labelled as yours wherever the two appear together.
• Declared values are stated, never normalised. Two declared figures with different units, functional units or system boundaries are not comparable, and no arithmetic here will make them so. They are shown next to each other with their own units, and the conditions that are unmet are named.
• Supply-side and demand-side are never counted together. What a credential requires of a product and what a rating tool asks of a project are different kinds of statement. They are never added into one total or listed as one set.

What you enter, and where it goes

Building a schedule works fully signed out, and that is the default. What you enter lives in the address bar, which is why copying the link reproduces it exactly and why nothing survives losing it. Being part of the address, it travels to the server with each page request the way any web address does, and it is not stored. So a link you share carries everything you typed: treat it the way you would treat the document you took it from.

You may also sign in, with an email address and a password or through Google, and keep your schedules in an account, one per project, each saving itself as you edit it. Signing in is optional and no part of the register sits behind it. What gets saved is only your own work: your categories, products, descriptions, declared values and the identifiers of the credentials you picked. Nothing from the register is copied into your account, so a saved schedule is a pointer into the published build rather than a copy of it, and opening it reads the same bundle every other reader sees.

A saved schedule can be read only by the account that wrote it, and the database enforces that as a rule rather than as a matter of our good behaviour. The one exception is the site's owner, who can see each account's email address and schedules, only to help their holders when asked (to restore or rename one, say), and never publishes them. Your email address is held to identify the account and to send the confirmation link, and for nothing else. Signing in keeps a session in your browser's own storage rather than in a tracking cookie. Choosing Google means visiting Google, which applies its own terms to that visit.

You can take your work away at any time. Export writes the whole schedule to a file you keep, signed in or not, and Import reads one back. Signing out clears the schedule from the page; it stays in your account. To have an account and the schedules saved against it deleted, write to corrections@klarcite.com. The account is closed straight away, can still be restored for 30 days if you change your mind, and is then removed for good with everything saved to it. A schedule you delete yourself is kept the same 30 days, out of your sight, in case you ask for it back.

The site runs no analytics, carries no advertising and no third-party trackers, and builds no profile of you.

Independence

No scheme owner pays to appear here. None has editorial control over what the register records, and none sees it before you do. Ordering is computed from the data and is never sold. Every document read here is one its publisher issued publicly under its own name.

Klar Cite is maintained by Jonas Bengtsson, who works professionally in life-cycle assessment and is an approved verifier of environmental product declarations. Several programmes the register covers operate in that field. No verification, consulting or advisory engagement has any bearing on what the register records or how it is ordered.

A manufacturer can claim the product pages for its own products, which lets it confirm or correct the credentials on them. Every change says which manufacturer made it and when, and a line a specifier entered is never removed. Every manufacturer publishes and maintains its product pages on the same terms, by subscription or, for a pilot, by Klar Cite’s grant. Building and previewing them is free. Neither changes what Klar Cite records about a credential. Anything a manufacturer adds is marked as theirs.

A manufacturer that has claimed a page may also add details to it: the product’s name and its own as it gives them, the country of origin, a description, a product code, its colours, and links to a datasheet and a website. The page shows them as that manufacturer’s, with the date. By adding them, the manufacturer lets Klar Cite show them, and it answers for them. Klar Cite does not check them, and may remove any of them, saying why.

Corrections, and how to contest a reading

We would much rather be corrected than be quoted wrongly. Three kinds of thing are worth writing about, and all three go to the same address.

• A clause is misread. The stored requirement does not match the document, the citation points at the wrong place, or a threshold or unit is wrong. This is the most useful kind of report and the one we act on fastest.
• Something is missing. A document, a version or a whole scheme the register does not hold. Say who publishes it and where it can be read. What the market asks for and the register does not hold is listed on Asked for, not held.
• A scheme is misrepresented. You own or administer a credential and the way it appears here is wrong, out of date, or reads as an endorsement it is not. Write in and say so, and say what the correct position is.

corrections@klarcite.com

What helps most: the clause address, which is the part of the page address beginning /r/; the build shown at the foot of the page you were reading; and what the document says instead. All three are on the page in front of you, and with them a reading can be checked without guesswork.

What happens then: a person reads it and replies. This is a small operation, so you get an answer rather than a ticket number, and no promise about how fast. A correction we accept goes into the next build, and because builds are dated and listed on What changed, you can point at the moment it landed. If we disagree with you, we will say so and say why, rather than leave it unanswered.

If you hold rights in a document

The register records facts about documents: which clause, which page, which version, what it requires. Where a document's terms allow its words to be quoted, short quotations appear with the citation. Where they do not, the words are withheld and the page says so. If you believe text of yours is shown that should not be, write to corrections@klarcite.com and name the clause. It will be withheld while we look, not after.

Builds, dates and permanent addresses

The register is published as dated builds rather than edited in place. Every page names the build it was served from, every build is listed on What changed with what it added and removed, and a feed carries the same record. A clause keeps its address across builds even when the document is re-worded, so a citation made today still resolves tomorrow, and pinning a citation to the exact build you read is one query parameter. How it's built spells out both the addressing and the reuse terms.

The facts in this register may be cited and linked freely with attribution. A clause's words may be quoted where the publisher's terms allow, with the citation; quoted requirement text may not be reproduced in bulk.

Asked for, not held

The one list on this page generated from the build: credentials that rating tools and procurement policies name, and that the register does not hold. Listing them is how the register says what it is missing, rather than letting a gap read as an answer.

• Aid by Trade · Cotton Made in Africa · asked for by 1 source
• OEKO-TEX® · OEKO-TEX® MADE IN GREEN · asked for by 1 source
• Textile Exchange · Responsible Wool Standard · asked for by 1 source
• Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) · Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) · asked for by 1 source
• International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) · ISCC PLUS · asked for by 1 source

All 111 credentials asked for and not held