Customer & Industry Requirements
CASRNs on the LBC Red List (2024 CASRN Guide)
Disclosure threshold for all intentionally added ingredients
Label validity period before mandatory renewal
Regulation Overview
The Declare Label Program is the building industry's most rigorous ingredient transparency standard—functioning as a "nutrition label" for building products. Administered by the International Living Future Institute, Declare requires manufacturers to disclose every intentionally added ingredient down to 100 ppm by weight, report each substance with its chemical name, CAS number, and concentration percentage, and screen the full formulation against the LBC Red List of hazardous chemicals.
The Red List CASRN Guide contains over 12,000 entries across chemical classes including PFAS, chlorinated polymers, orthophthalates, organotin compounds, and toxic heavy metals. ILFI updates the Red List annually with input from its Material Health Technical Advisory Group. Declare labels feed directly into compliance pathways for LEED v4/v4.1 material ingredient credits, the WELL Building Standard, and the Living Building Challenge. For manufacturers placing products into specification-driven commercial construction markets, Declare Label compliance is increasingly a market access requirement—not a voluntary exercise.
Achieving and maintaining Declare status requires substance-level data from every supplier in your bill of materials, continuous monitoring against Red List changes, and annual renewal documentation that proves formulation integrity.
Building product manufacturers seeking specification in LEED, WELL, or LBC-certified projects
Suppliers providing components or raw materials to Declare-labeled finished products
Distributors and representatives placing building products into transparency-driven commercial markets
Manufacturers pursuing Living Building Challenge Materials Petal or Living Product Challenge certification
Companies responding to architect and specifier RFQs that require ingredient disclosure documentation
International manufacturers seeking Declare labels through ILFI International Partner programs
Key Thresholds
ILFI updates the Red List CASRN Guide annually, and Priority List substances can advance to Red List status with each cycle. When toxic heavy metals or flame retardants move to the Red List, your team must reassess every product formulation—but supplier ingredient declarations are 12 months old and scattered across email threads and shared drives. Identifying which products contain newly restricted CASRNs requires manual cross-referencing that takes weeks.
A specifier requests your Declare label for a LEED v4.1 project. Your label requires disclosure to 100 ppm—ten times more granular than LEED's 1,000 ppm minimum. Supplier 1 provides data only to 1,000 ppm. Supplier 2 sends a safety data sheet that covers hazardous substances but omits non-hazardous additives. Supplier 3 claims proprietary formulation. Your 99% disclosure target is mathematically unreachable without substance-level BOM mapping.
Your product needs to satisfy Declare Red List screening, LEED v4.1 material ingredient credit requirements, WELL Building Standard Feature 26, and a customer's internal restricted substance list—simultaneously. Each framework references different chemical lists, different disclosure thresholds, and different documentation formats. Without a centralized compliance data backbone, your team maintains four parallel tracking systems for the same product.
Every active Declare label expires after 12 months and must be renewed against the current Red List. A manufacturer with 50 labeled products faces 50 separate renewal workflows per year—each requiring formulation confirmation, Red List rescreening, and fee processing. When the Red List expands mid-cycle, products that were Red List Free last year may be demoted to Declared status at renewal. Manual hazardous substance tracking at this scale creates both compliance risk and commercial disruption.
Certivo In Action
Certivo in Action — Declare Workflow
Features Tabs
Building Materials & Construction
Your Pain Point
Core market for Declare; specifiers require labels for LEED/WELL/LBC projects
Electronics Manufacturing
Your Pain Point
Lighting, controls, and electrical components specified into commercial interiors require Declare labels
Industrial Machinery & Heavy Equipment
Your Pain Point
HVAC, mechanical systems, and industrial coatings specified into certified buildings
Chemical Manufacturing
Your Pain Point
Formulation suppliers must provide CAS-level ingredient data to downstream product manufacturers
Consumer Goods
Your Pain Point
Paints, adhesives, sealants, and finishes entering commercial construction channels face Declare requirements
Medical Devices & Equipment
Your Pain Point
Healthcare facility construction increasingly requires Declare-labeled interior products
From Manual Ingredient Compilation to Exception Management
CORA extracts ingredient data automatically from any supplier document format. Your team focuses on exceptions that need human judgment—not manual data entry and CAS number cross-referencing across spreadsheets.
Declare Renewal Acceleration
Generate complete, label-ready Declare submission packages in hours—not the 4–6 weeks of manual ingredient compilation, Red List cross-referencing, and disclosure gap remediation.
Proactive Declare Compliance Monitoring
When ILFI advances chemicals from Priority to Red List, Certivo reassesses your portfolio instantly. Know which products face Declaration Status changes before your next renewal cycle—enabling proactive reformulation rather than reactive label demotion.
Frequently Asked Questions
What products and companies need Declare labels?
Any building product manufacturer seeking specification in LEED, WELL, or Living Building Challenge-certified projects benefits from Declare labels. The program is open to all products across all CSI Divisions—from flooring and coatings to lighting and mechanical systems. While Declare is a voluntary program, it has become a de facto market access requirement for commercial construction projects pursuing green building certification, making it essential for manufacturers competing in specification-driven markets.
What are the costs associated with obtaining and maintaining Declare labels?
ILFI charges $1,100 per new label for the first nine products, with tiered pricing at $900 per label for ten or more. Annual renewals are discounted at $750 per label when formulations remain unchanged. Optional third-party verification incurs additional assessor fees. For manufacturers with large portfolios, Certivo's automated ingredient collection and Red List screening through CORA significantly reduces the internal labor cost of preparing and maintaining each label submission.
How does the Red List affect a product's Declaration Status?
A product's Declaration Status—Red List Free, LBC Red List Approved, or Declared—is determined by screening all disclosed ingredients against the current LBC Red List CASRN Guide. Products containing zero Red List chemicals at 100 ppm or above earn Red List Free status. When ILFI advances substances from the Priority List to the Red List, previously compliant products may be demoted at renewal. Certivo maintains continuous sync with ILFI's Red List updates and proactively alerts manufacturers when portfolio products are affected.
How does Declare align with LEED, WELL, and other certification programs?
Declare labels with Red List Free or Declared status fulfill the LEED v4 and v4.1 Building Product Disclosure and Optimization Credit, Option 1. Third-party verified Declare labels count as 1.5 products toward the credit. Red List Free and LBC Red List Approved labels also satisfy WELL Feature 26 for Enhanced Material Safety. CORA generates certification-specific documentation packages that map your Declare data directly to LEED, WELL, and LBC credit requirements.
What declaration formats does Certivo accept from suppliers for Declare compliance?
Certivo accepts any format: safety data sheets, PDF declarations, Excel ingredient lists, IPC-1752 submissions, XML files, and freeform responses in any language. CORA's AI document parsing extracts chemical names, CAS numbers, and weight percentages regardless of format or language, eliminating the need to standardize supplier inputs. The same supplier submission is also validated against REACH, RoHS, TSCA, and Prop 65—supporting multi-framework validation from a single collection campaign.