Dear NSF Carpet Joint Committee (JC) Member, It has been some time since the NSF/ANSI140-2007 Sustainable Carpet Assessment Standard committee met and I wanted to update you on the progress of the standard and to start the preparations for the JC meeting next year. The standard was issued at the end of October of 2007 and has been available for certification since that time. A number of carpet companies have certified product against the standard, and several more are undertaking the necessary certification steps to have product available next year. A complete list of those products that are certified by NSF is available at
http://www.nsf.org/Certified/Sustain/Listings.asp As was agreed when the standard was formally voted upon, we would like to have a meeting within the second quarter of 2009 to review progress on the standard. I intend to hold the meeting in the second half of May. By January 7th, please send me any dates after May 18th that you CANNOT attend a meeting. I expect that the JC will meet for a two day period. I would like to hold the meeting in Atlanta as it is convenient for many committee members, and a good hub for travel. The purpose of the meeting in May will be: * To review progress on certification to the standard and any issues that have arisen in the certification process with the existing standard. * To review issue papers that have been generated and submitted to the committee. Issue papers are the formal mechanism that NSF uses to help inform standards maintenance and revision. Issue papers can be submitted at any time and can be used to help formulate changes to standards on an on-going basis. The meeting in May will be a good opportunity for us to review issue papers as a group and decide how we wish to proceed with any changes to the standard that emerge from that process. I have attached five examples of issue papers with this email to give you a sense of what is expected in the development of an issue paper. I have also included a blank copy of the issue paper so that you can more easily generate your own. In order to manage the meeting effectively, and to give the JC members time to review the issue papers and formulate their response, we will distribute issue papers submitted to the committee three weeks prior to the meeting. This should give you approximately five months to generate the papers and submit them through the NSF web site. We will send instructions on how to do this under a separate cover. Thanks, and have a great holiday season, Dr Matthew J Realff Associate Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Georgia Tech Atlanta, GA, 30332-0100 matthew.realff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Attachment: Joint Committee Issue Document.doc Description: Joint Committee Issue Document.doc Attachment: FE-2008-11.doc Description: FE-2008-11.doc Attachment: DS-2008-1 Chondroitin Sulfate.doc Description: DS-2008-1 Chondroitin Sulfate.doc Attachment: DWA-2008-14 surface area determination.doc Description: DWA-2008-14 surface area determination.doc Attachment: DWTU-2008-5-Downstream Reservoirs.doc Description: DWTU-2008-5-Downstream Reservoirs.doc Attachment: DWTU-2008-13 HC Legislation.doc Description: DWTU-2008-13 HC Legislation.doc