Birch & Willow has compiled three glossaries: Lamp and Luminary Design Glossary; Light Bulb Glossary; and Eco-Glossary. Our lighting business is an interdisciplinary undertaking. We hope the information provided in these glossaries will help you better understand the intersecting worlds of lighting design, technology and environmental responsibility where the development and creation of Birch & Willow products takes place. The glossaries include information from many sources as well as some of our own. Please contact us with any questions or suggestions
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Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES)
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Software program developed by the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). It is aimed at designers, builders, and product manufacturers. It provides a way to balance the environmental and economic performance of building products. BEES measures the environmental performance of building products by using an environmental life-cycle assessment approach specified in the latest versions of ISO 14000 draft standards. All stages in the life of a product line are analyzed: raw material acquisition, manufacture, transportation, installation, use, and recycling and waste management.
Economic performance is measured using the ASTM standard life cycle cost method, which covers the costs of initial investment, replacement, operation, maintenance and repair, and disposal. Environmental and economic performance is combined into an overall performance measure using the ASTM standard for Multi-Attribute Decision Analysis. The BEES methodology is being refined and expanded under sponsorship of the EPA's Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Program. BEES currently addresses categories of product choices and are not specific to a type of product.
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| Conservation |
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Preserving and renewing, when possible, human and natural resources. It is the use, protection and improvement of natural resources according to principles that will ensure their highest economic or social benefits. |
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| Eco-centric |
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Being centered on the natural environment as a starting point for understanding. |
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| Eco-Labeling |
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Eco-labeling gives credibility to your claim that your product is better for the environment, cheaper to maintain, and cleaner to recycle than otherwise similar products or services. There are three levels of eco-labeling. Information (typically provided on a label attached to a product) informing a potential consumer of a product's characteristics, or of the production or processing method(s) used in its production. |
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| Economies of Density |
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Generally, economies wherein unit costs are lower in relation to population density. The higher the population density, the lower the likely costs of infrastructure required providing a service. One example would be the costs associated with providing electricity networks to urban vs. rural areas.
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| Economies of Scale |
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In many cases, the bigger a company gets, the cheaper it is able to produce or distribute each additional unit. Generally, this is because some costs of production do not increase with each unit. These fixed costs are effectively averaged out over the cost of each unit, so that each unit produced reduces the average.
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| Economies of Scope |
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A situation in which one company can produce or distribute two or more different goods more cheaply than if the goods were made by different companies. |
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| Ecosystem |
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A dynamic complex of plant, animal and microorganism communities and their non-living environment that interact as functional units.
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| Ecological Cost |
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The total impact on the environment, including source depletion, pollution and degradation of habitats.
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| Ecological deficit |
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The amount by which the ecological footprint of a country or region exceeds the biological capacity of the space available.
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| Ecology |
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The study of how living things affect each other, and how they are affected by their environment.
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| Energy |
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A measure of work done by an electrical system over a given period of time, often expressed in kilowatt-hours (kWh). |
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| Energy Efficacy |
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Technologies and measures that reduce the amount of electricity and/or fuel required to do the same work, such as powering homes, offices and industries.
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| Energy Star |
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An energy-efficiency rating system sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. A high Energy Star rating means that the product is designed to minimize its energy consumption. www.energystar.gov. |
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| Environmental Footprint |
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For an industrial setting, this is a company's environmental impact determined by the amount of depletable raw materials and nonrenewable resources it consumes to make its products, and the quantity of wastes and emissions that are generated in the process. Traditionally, for a company to grow, the footprint had to get larger. Today, finding ways to reduce the environmental footprint is a priority for leading companies. |
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| Environmental Impact |
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Any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, wholly or partially resulting from human activity, industry or natural disasters. |
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| Environmentally Preferable Product |
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Products that have a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared with competing products that serve the same purpose. The product comparison may consider raw materials acquisition, production, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, reuse, operation, maintenance, or disposal. |
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| Environmentally Preferable Purchasing |
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Environmentally Preferable Purchasing is a United States federal-wide program (Executive Order 13101) that encourages and assists Executive agencies in the purchasing of Environmentally Preferable Products and services. |
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| Green Design |
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A design, usually architectural, conforming to environmentally sound principles of building, material and energy use. A green building, for example, might make use of solar panels, skylights, and recycled building materials. |
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| Green Seal |
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Green Seal is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding the environment and transforming the marketplace by promoting the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services. |
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| Greenwash |
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Disinformation disseminated by an organization or business so as to present an environmentally responsible public image. |
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| International Organization for Standardization (ISO) |
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ISO develops International Standards for all industry sectors. As part of its ISO 14000 series of environmental standards, the International Standards Organization has drawn up a group of standards specifically governing environmental labeling referred to as eco-labeling. |
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| LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) |
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Developed and administered by the U.S. Green Building Council, the LEED rating system is the most widely known and accepted green building certification program. (www.usgbc.org/leed) It is a self-assessing system designed for rating new and existing commercial, institutional, and high-rise residential buildings. It evaluates environmental performance from a "whole building" perspective over a building's life cycle, providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a green building. |
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| Life Cycle of a Product |
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All stages of a product's development, from extraction of fuel for power to production, marketing, use and disposal. |
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| Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) |
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The assessment of a product's full environmental costs, from raw material to final disposal, in terms of consumption of resources, energy and waste. |
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| Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) |
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An accounting of the energy and waste associated with the creation of a new product through use and disposal. |
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| Organic |
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Pertaining to any work regarded as comparable to plant or animal forms in having a structure and a plan that fulfill perfectly the functional requirements that form in themselves an intellectually lucid, integrated whole. |
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| Post-consumer Material |
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Any household or commercial product that has served its original, intended use. |
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| Post-consumer Recycle Content |
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A product composition that contains some percentage of material that has been reclaimed from the same or another end use at the end of its former, useful life. It would otherwise be discarded as waste. Recyclable products can be collected and remanufactured into new products after they've been used. |
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| Post-industrial Material |
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Industrial manufacturing scrap or waste; also called pre-consumer material. |
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| Reclamation |
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Restoration of materials found in the waste stream to a beneficial use that may be other than the original use. |
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| Recycling |
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Process by which materials that would otherwise become solid waste are collected, separated or processed and returned to the economic mainstream to be reused in the form of raw materials or finished goods. |
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| Reduce |
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Act of purchasing or consuming less to begin with, so as not to have to reuse or recycle later. |
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| Resource Conservation |
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Practices that protect, preserve or renew natural resources in a manner that will ensure their highest economic or social benefits. |
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| Renewable Resources |
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A natural resource qualifies as a renewable resource if it is replenished by natural processes at a rate comparable or faster than its rate of consumption by humans or other users. |
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| Reuse |
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Using an item more than once. This includes conventional reuse where the item is used again for the same function, and new-life reuse where it is used for a new function. |
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| Sustainable |
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A characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems. |
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| Sustainable Development |
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An approach to advance, which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. |
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| Total Environmental Impact (TEI) |
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The total change on the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, wholly or partially resulting from human activity, industry or natural disasters. |
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| Up-cycling |
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A term coined to describe the creation of a product with higher inherent value, manufactured from a material at the end of its service life, which had a lower initial end use value. It is important to note that the term as currently used, does not provide insight into environmental benefit (e.g. there may actually be less environmental benefit to up-cycling if energy used to up-cycle is more than recycling back to the same product). |
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| USGBC (US Green Building Council) |
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The U.S. Green Building Council is a non-profit community of leaders from across the building industry working to make green buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places to live and work available to everyone within a generation. |
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