Fields of activity

Primary task and objective

The GEV’s primary mis­sion is to pro­mote con­sumer, health and envir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion in the field of build­ing products for indoor use. The GEV pur­sues an open inform­a­tion policy and sup­ports the cross-vendor cooper­a­tion with part­ners in the industry. Pro­gress towards a healthy indoor cli­mate can only be achieved if all parties involved join their efforts. Man­u­fac­tur­ers, crafts­men, archi­tects, plan­ners and con­sumers must all play their part and jointly com­mit to low-emis­sion products of high qual­ity.

The GEV’s first and fore­most goal was to provide the mar­ket with a vendor-neut­ral assess­ment tool that allows users to com­pare the large num­ber of avail­able products with respect to their VOC emis­sion char­ac­ter­ist­ics. To this end, the EMICODE® clas­si­fic­a­tion sys­tem was estab­lished.

 

Licensing

When a man­u­fac­turer sub­mits a license applic­a­tion for one of his products, the product is tested for its emis­sion beha­vi­or by an inde­pend­ent test­ing labor­at­ory in accord­ance with a defined, stand­ard­ized test pro­ced­ure. Based on the sci­en­tific­ally determ­ined emis­sion data, the man­u­fac­turer receives a license spe­cify­ing the cor­res­pond­ing EMICODE® class. This license author­izes the man­u­fac­turer to label and advert­ise his product with the trade­mark-pro­tec­ted EMICODE® seal. Man­u­fac­tur­ers whose products bear the EMICODE® under­take to man­u­fac­ture these products under con­trolled and qual­ity-assured con­di­tions in order to ensure com­pli­ance with the require­ments of the EMICODE® class at all times.

Quality assurance

Bet­ter safe than sorry. True to this motto, the GEV as the super­vis­ory body mon­it­ors the licensed products right from the start.  Without the man­u­fac­tur­ers’ know­ledge, EMICODE®-cer­ti­fied products are pur­chased at ran­dom from the open mar­ket and sub­jec­ted to rig­or­ous long-term tests by inter­na­tion­ally recog­nized test­ing insti­tutes to determ­ine their emis­sion beha­vi­or. Any non-com­pli­ance is severely pen­al­ized. Man­u­fac­tur­ers whose products do not com­ply with the EMICODE® cer­ti­fic­a­tion require­ments must cov­er the costs of test­ing. In addi­tion, they are obliged to have products from new batches retested in the same man­ner after rec­ti­fy­ing the defi­cien­cies in their pro­duc­tion pro­cess.

 

 

In the event of repeated non-com­pli­ance, they face the with­draw­al of their product license and, in the worst case, the loss of all EMICODE® cer­ti­fic­a­tion rights.

The mon­it­or­ing res­ults of recent years show that reg­u­lar checks are the only way to main­tain the neces­sary dis­cip­line required to pro­duce optim­um product qual­ity. To this day, the EMICODE® is the only VOC label in the mar­ket that is sub­ject to reg­u­lar and strict qual­ity con­trols, thus provid­ing reli­able con­sumer pro­tec­tion with respect to indoor air hygiene and healthy liv­ing.

Members

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Do You Have Questions?

If you have any ques­tions on cer­tain top­ics or want to con­tact us for anoth­er reas­on,
please con­tact us by phone or email.

Phone: +49 (0)211 843 449 – 01

info@emicode.com