There has been a proliferation of building and product sustainability standards based on the success of the LEED (TM) program from the green building council for new commercial building construction. A feature of these standards is the accumulation of points for undertaking various activities of different types, such as improving energy efficiency. The combined points total leads to certification of the product at different performance levels. The question is whether the standards actually promote products that are better from a life cycle perspective, or whether the standards are biased towards certain activities based on a perception that some activities are inherently better than others (recycling or bio-based materials for example). In this work, we used optimization methods coupled with life cycle inventory information to explore this question. A carpet standard is used to compare the life cycle optimization against an optimization to earn the maximum number of points in the standard. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.