Buildings have a long lifespan. The materials specified today will affect indoor air quality, occupant health and embodied carbon for decades. As BREEAM, LEEDs and WELL certifications become standard practice on commercial projects, being able to identify and verify the sustainability credentials of acoustic products is increasingly essential.

The good news, many of the world’s leading acoustic manufacturers are setting a high bar. Understanding the credentials they hold helps you make evidence-based decisions and meet your project’s environmental targets.

Low-VOC Materials

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are chemicals commonly found in adhesives, coatings and industrial manufacturing processes. When present in building materials, they can off-gas over time and degrade indoor air quality.
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Low-VOC acoustic panels minimise these emissions, helping to create healthier environments for occupants. This is particularly important in schools, healthcare facilities and offices where people spend long hours indoors. At Resonics, we only work with manufacturers who prioritise low-VOC materials and are transparent about what goes into their products.

Circularity — Closing the Loop

Circular design is about keeping materials in productive use for as long as possible and designing products so that nothing becomes waste at the end of life. For acoustic panels, this translates into three practical approaches: modular product systems that allow damaged sections to be replaced rather than entire installations; materials that can be recycled at the end of life rather than going to landfill; and manufacturer take-back or reuse programmes that close the material loop.

Circular acoustic design isn’t just good environmental practice, it’s increasingly written into project briefs and procurement frameworks.

Red List Free Materials

Some commonly used building materials contain substances that are harmful to human health or ecosystems. The Living Building Challenge’s Red List identifies these chemicals and the Declare label is used to identify products that have been verified as free from them.

Specifying Red List Free acoustic panels protects not just building occupants but the workers who manufacture and install them, as well as the broader environment downstream. It’s a straightforward way to raise the health standard of a project.

Net-Zero and Embodied Carbon Reduction

When we talk about a building’s carbon footprint, operational energy, heating, cooling, and lighting tend to get the most attention. But embodied carbon, the emissions associated with extracting, manufacturing, and transporting materials, is a significant and growing concern in sustainable design.

Reducing the embodied carbon of acoustic panels typically involves choosing lower-impact base materials, supporting manufacturers with efficient production processes and renewable energy use, minimising transport distances and working with supply chains that have measurable carbon reduction strategies in place.

For projects targeting net-zero or carbon-neutral certification, understanding the embodied carbon profile of specified products is essential, which is where Environmental Product Declarations become invaluable.

Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)

An Environmental Product Declaration is a third-party verified document that provides a transparent, standardised account of a product’s environmental impact across its full lifecycle, from raw material extraction through to end-of-life disposal.

EPDs typically cover resource consumption, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste generation. What makes them particularly useful is that they provide objective, comparable data. Rather than relying on a manufacturer’s marketing claims, specifiers can use EPDs to make like-for-like comparisons between products and demonstrate due diligence on sustainability-focused projects.

Cradle to Cradle Certified

Cradle to Cradle Certified is one of the most rigorous and comprehensive sustainability certifications available for building products. Aligned with ISO environmental labelling standards, it evaluates products across five categories: material health, product circularity, clean air and climate protection, water and soil stewardship and social fairness.

Certification is awarded at Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum level, with each tier representing a higher standard of environmental and social performance. The framework is designed to encourage continuous improvement, meaning that a Cradle to Cradle certified product is not just verified as sustainable today, but is committed to becoming more sustainable over time.

Health Product Declaration (HPD)

The Health Product Declaration provides a standardised, transparent framework for reporting the full material contents of a building product alongside the health effects associated with those materials. Where EPDs focus on environmental impact, HPDs focus specifically on human health, making them complementary tools for comprehensive sustainability assessment.

For projects targeting LEED v4, WELL certification, or any specification process with a strong focus on occupant health, HPDs provide the kind of documented transparency that can be independently verified and trusted.

FSC Certification

For timber acoustic panels, FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification is the key credential to look for. It verifies that wood has been sourced from forests managed to high environmental and social standards, preserving biodiversity, protecting the rights of workers and local communities, and ensuring that timber harvesting remains economically viable long-term.

When specifying timber wall panels or acoustic cladding, FSC certification is the clearest indication that the material chain can be traced back to responsible forest management.

Global GreenTag

Global GreenTag is an internationally recognised environmental certification and rating system for building and construction products. It assesses products across a broad range of health, sustainability, and lifecycle criteria, providing specifiers with independently verified data that supports green building ratings, including LEED, BREEAM and WELL.

EU Ecolabel

The EU Ecolabel is the only EU-wide environmental labelling scheme operating under ISO 14024 Type I standards, overseen directly by the European Commission. It assesses the full lifecycle environmental performance of a product, from production through to disposal, and is independently verified.

For acoustic products specified on European projects, or those seeking BREEAM credits under responsible sourcing categories, the EU Ecolabel provides a trusted, independently audited reference point. Many of the fabrics used in stretched fabric acoustic systems carry the EU Ecolabel or an equivalent standard.

OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100

For fabric-faced acoustic panels, OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 is the benchmark textile safety certification. It verifies that every component of a textile product, from raw fibre and yarn through to the finished fabric, has been tested and confirmed free from harmful substances.

This matters for acoustic panels used in schools, healthcare environments, or any space where occupant safety is a priority. It’s also increasingly relevant for projects targeting WELL certification, where material safety is a core performance category.

No single certification covers everything, and the right combination of credentials will depend on your project’s specific targets, whether that’s a BREEAM Excellent rating, LEED Gold, net-zero embodied carbon, or simply a robust due diligence record for a health-conscious client.

What matters is being able to ask the right questions and know what the answers mean. If you’re specifying acoustic panels and want to understand which sustainability credentials are most relevant to your project, our team is happy to help. We work with manufacturers across all major certification frameworks and can provide the documentation you need to specify with confidence.

Get in touch to discuss your project.