Sustainable Steps

About Us

Mission: To Certify Steps Towards Sustainable Prosperity

David contracts to various certifiers worldwide to assess organization’s compliance to various ecological standards such as E-Stewards, R2, RIOS, Green Seal (GS) 1, 11, 33, 37, 40; 41, National Organic Plan; Forest Stewardship Council (FSC); ISO 14001 (Environmental Management System); OHSAS 18001, ISO 14020, 14024, and 14025 (Ecolabel programs), ISO 9001 and 14001, 17065-(Conformity assessment of certifiers), Sustainable Tourism.

He has gained expertise from a blend of international acumen, academic knowledge and engineering/manufacturing experience. David is an expert in Environmental Management Systems (EMS), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), project management and sustainability gap analysis. He has two degrees in Engineering (Mechanical and Industrial) from the University of Wisconsin and a Masters degree in Environmental Decision Making from the Open University in the UK.

David has over 20 years’ experience in verifying organization compliance to a variety of standards.

In Japan, he created and managed a quality certification office for BVQI.

In the United States, David assessed over 100 organizations against the Quality Management System standard ISO 9001 for Underwriters Laboratory.

In 2000, he started his own company (Sustainable Steps), to contract to a number of certifiers to verify organizational compliance against a variety of standards, including Organic certification, FSC certification for wood and fiber, ISO 14001 and ISO 65.

David’s masters dissertation researched the ISO 14001 differences in accreditation rules between the US and Europe, and how that effects registrar’s audit procedures and the environmental performance of the organizations they certify.

With Green Seal, he managed over 100 projects in assisting hotels to attain Green Seal’s GS-33 certification in Green Hospitality.

With Sustainable Travel International, he helped develop their STEP (Sustainable Tourism Eco-certification Program (STEP) and train students to audit to this standard.

David developed a tool to measure a product’s level of sustainability. This tool combines economy with earth’s carrying capacity. See www.sustainablesteps.com

David has been an ISO 14001 Technical Expert for RvA (Dutch accreditation council) and an ANSI Technical Expert for the recently established Ecolabel Accreditation program

He serves as an advisory board member to Responsible Purchasing Network (www.responsiblepurchasing.org)