Sustainability Standards and Protocols

NSF has developed industry-leading standards and protocols for services and service providers, carpet, resilient flooring, textiles, roofing and many more categories.

NSF/ANSI 140: Sustainability Assessment for Carpet

Based on life-cycle assessment principles, the standard employs a point-based system to evaluate commercial carpet products and manufacturers against established prerequisite requirements, performance criteria and quantifiable metrics in six key areas: public health and environment, energy and energy efficiency, biobased or recycled content materials/environmentally preferable materials, manufacturing, reclamation and end-of-life management, and innovation.

NSF/ANSI 332: Sustainability Assessment for Resilient Flooring

This science-based and credible standard establishes a consistent approach to the evaluation and determination of more sustainable resilient floor coverings. Resilient flooring product and manufacturers are evaluated against prerequisite requirements and performance criteria in these key areas: product design, product manufacturing, long-term value, end-of-life management, corporate governance and innovation.

NSF/ANSI 336: Sustainability Assessment for Commercial Furnishings Fabric

This standard addresses the environmental, economic and social aspects of furnishing fabric products and manufacturers. This life-cycle, point-based standard includes prerequisite requirements and performance criteria in eight key areas: fiber sourcing, safety of materials, water quality and conservation, energy use, air quality and emissions, recycling practices in manufacturing/end of use and social accountability.

NSF/ANSI 342: Sustainability Assessment for Wallcovering Products

The standard covers materials such as textiles, vinyl, alternative polymer (or vinyl- or alternative polymer-coated), paper and other natural fiber-based wallcovering products. It assigns points by evaluation against prerequisite requirements and performance criteria. Unique to this standard is the requirement to combine points from both the manufacturer and distributor to determine the certification level of a product.

ANSI/NSI 373: Sustainable Production of Natural Dimension Stone

Establishes criteria to measure the extent to which natural stone has been produced sustainably. This standard applies to all processors of natural stone, from quarry operations through final stone fabrication, and is intended to allow for both domestic and international market participation from natural dimension stone producers. In practice, the facility operator applies this standard to quarry operations, stone fabrication, or both.

NSF/ANSI 375: Sustainability Assessment for Water Contact Products

This standard covers products that contact drinking water, wastewater, and recreational water and their packaging. The document includes relevant criteria across the product(s) life cycle from raw material extraction through manufacturing, use, and end-of-life management.

NSF/ANSI 391.1: General Sustainability Assessment Criteria for Professional Services

This standard establishes criteria for evaluating the environmental, social and economic impacts of professional services providers, including organizations classified as professional service providers by the U.S. Federal Professional Services Schedule (PSS) or NAICS Sector 54. Service providers can use NSF/ANSI 391.1 to differentiate themselves from competitors by documenting sustainable business practices, meet state and federal procurement guidelines for sustainable services, and guide their business practices and sustainability programs.

NSF/ANSI 416: Sustainability Assessment for Water Treatment Chemical Products

This standard establishes a consistent approach to the evaluation and determination of environmentally preferable and sustainable chemical product manufacturing processes, water treatment chemical products, distributors, repackagers, and relabelers of chemical products.

NSF/ANSI 426: Environmental Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility Assessment of Servers

This standard defines environmental and corporate social responsibility performance criteria for computer servers as defined in the ENERGY STAR Server specification.

NSF/ANSI 457: Sustainability Leadership Standard for Photovoltaic Modules and Photovoltaic Inverters

Establishes product sustainability performance criteria and corporate performance metrics that exemplify sustainability leadership in the market.