According to Steve Ashkin, the U.S. Green Building Council has announced that the revisions to LEED-EB have been approved by an overwhelming majority.

According to Doug Gatlin, Vice President for Market Development at the USGBC (who was until recently the LEED-EB program manager) "It passed member ballot with flying colors. In fact, we received over 2,110 votes in all. Quorum requirements were for 1200! In addition to this, 98 percent of all votes were positive. This is a very high number of 'yes' votes, so we can take this as a strong endorsement from the membership."

The revision of LEED for Existing Buildings means good news for the cleaning industry. In the new version, green cleaning is now a prerequisite, which means everyone going after LEED certification must do green cleaning which should further accelerate demand for green products and services.

Steve comments that he is especially pleased that the Core Committee has introduced a new credit worth up to two (2) points for conducting a "custodial effectiveness audit" which for the first time will reward facilities who do superior cleaning and will create an incentive for others to improve. He encourages that you please take just a minute to think about the potential meaning of this — while more effective cleaning should result in healthier buildings, think about what happens to your business if building owners demand more cleaning! This is truly a win-win for building owners and their occupants, the cleaning industry and the environment.

Other important changes include:
• Slightly changing the name to LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance as a way to clarify how this Rating System is to be used.
• Clarifying that green cleaning requires "effective" cleaning as opposed to just switching to a few green products.
• Adding Environmental Choice as an additional option to Green Seal for "certified" products to make compliance even easier.
• Reorganizing the credits to make finding all of the green cleaning credits simpler.
• Including language that requires the development of a program to encourage handwashing.
• Clarifying language on equipment requirements and adding some additional language for CRI certified products.
• Adding language that allows janitorial paper products derived from rapidly renewable resources or made from tree-free fibers in addition to those made with recycled content.