Sustainability: Case Study

First Environment completed an environmental verification of a new line of flooring for Mannington Mills, a residential & commercial flooring company known for its environmentally sustainable manufacturing processes. 

First Environment, experienced in providing third party auditing, certification and verification services, developed a proprietary system for verifying environmental attribute claims. The system is consistent with the Federal Trade Commission’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims and ISO 14024: Environmental Labeling Type I - Guiding Principles and Procedures.

First Environment’s internal verification management system is comprised of procedures and tools that guide the process, methodology and reporting of the verification process. The major steps taken to complete this verification consisted of a kickoff meeting, strategic review of background documentation, review of Mannington’s claim verification inquiry form, site visit, data assessment and reporting. More specifically, First Environment examined Mannington’s product recipe formulations, quality control procedures, and quality control testing data, and visually observed the manufacturing process first-hand.

First Environment assessed Mannington’s processes and operations related to this product for over four months, before verifying its Commercial Relay Homogeneous Sheet Flooring line as having a nominal 40 percent pre-consumer recycled content for 16 stock keeping units (SKU). Relay is manufactured in Mannington’s Salem, New Jersey, facility, using pre-consumer (also called post industrial) carpet trim waste from carpet produced in its Georgia facility. 

Upon completion, First Environment issued Mannington a detailed report documenting the activities undertaken through the verification process for the recycled content claim.

Environmental Attribute Verification: Recycled Content Claim