Underwriters Laboratory’s UL Environment, which is certifying green products and verifying green product claims, has just announced the first product to be rated: Serious Materials’ EcoRock drywall. The product appears genuine, based on the excellent information on the company website, and it’s also got Cradle to Cradle certification.

While the UL assessment has UL’s brand clout behind it, they could add assurance and help alleviate consumer confusion over what’s truly friendly for the environment by providing complete disclosure about what their certifications mean on their website. Right now, there’s nothing on the UL Environment website that makes the label credible (except for the aforementioned brand power). By comparison, the Cradle to Cradle site has full disclosure.

Some questions they can answer: How and what are they testing? What is the process? What are the benchmarks and standards? Are they only looking at claims made or are they also comparing the product to similar ones? Do they consider what’s possible, so that if a company is only doing the bare minimum, it counts less?

Eco-labels are proliferating at a pretty fast clip. If they’re going to clear up confusion and help consumers sort out conflicting environmental claims and know what makes one thing greener than another, certifiers (and product marketers) need to help educate.

For more on the UL rollout, see Sustainable Industries’ excellent article. It was also covered at GreenBiz.com.

I played hooky earlier this week to visit the California Academy of Sciences’ new building in Golden Gate Park. It’s a beautiful, airy construction, a model of sustainable architecture from the lower level “water planet” of aquariums teeming with amazing sealife to the undulating 2.5-acre green roof of native plants. Critics are justifiably gushing. (See Nicolai Ouroussof’s review in the New York Times and the extensive coverage in Metropolis magazine, which examines all the sustainability aspects of Renzo Piano’s creation.) It’s expected to be the largest building to receive LEED Platinum status.

But the building and its exhibits aren’t the only things that amaze me. I love the clarity and simplicity of the academy’s communications. Language is plain and direct—it’s like a person is talking to you. Concepts aren’t dumbed down, they’re just distilled. (In the case of the video explaining climate change, it’s practically poetry.) It makes science accessible and fun.

This conversational style is an integral part of everything they do, from the exhibit signage and museum map to their website and member publication—it’s even reflected in their mission statement, “to explore, explain and protect the natural world.” It matches the spare, inviting visual design (by the creative folks at Pentagram).

The Academy of Sciences is taking its communications seriously—and having fun with it. It’s a great example of how words can deliver a brand—and fulfill a mission to simply explain.