LEED continuing certification is obtained by meeting standards in a number of categories. If you have a LEED Building, you are well aware of the various criteria you have to track to achieve this.

Corporate Image can help. We create products which are FSC certified with 97-100% post consumer waste.

There are two categories where using a recycled and recyclable binder can help your score (up to 10 points worth!).

Sustainable Purchasing Policy and Solid Waste Management Policy. 

If you are a LEED certified building, you have to have a Sustainable Purchasing Policy put in place to "To reduce the environmental and air quality impacts of the materials acquired for use in the operations and maintenance of buildings and to facilitate the reduction of ongoing waste and toxins generated by building occupants and building operations that are hauled to and disposed of in landfills or incineration facilities."

For Sustainable Purchasing Policy for ongoing consumables the guidelines are:

• Purchases contain at least 10% postconsumer and/or 20% postindustrial material.
• Purchases contain at least 50% rapidly renewable materials.
• Purchases contain at least 50% materials harvested and processed or extracted and processed within 500 miles of the project.
• Purchases consist of at least 50% Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)–certified paper products.
• Batteries are rechargeable.

Your Solid waste management policy must cover ongoing consumables. The guidelines that pertain to our binders are:

• Reuse, recycle or compost 50% of the ongoing consumables waste stream (by weight or volume).

Corporate Image makes FSC certified bare board 3-ring binders which use 97-100% Post Consumer Waste and can be recycled. In fact, they can be ready to go into the recylcle bin in about 9 seconds, which is how long it approximately takes to remove the ring mechanism. Our manufacturing facility is centrally located in Des Moines, IA.

Each purchase can receive credit for each sustainable criterion met (i.e., a $100 purchase that contains both 10% post consumer recycled content and 50% FSC certified counts twice in the calculation, for a total of $200 of sustainable purchasing). Your Naked Binder purchases can count twice or three times to your LEED Certification.

If you are using vinyl binders, they do not count towards these credits because vinyl off-gassing compromises air quality.