EPDs: Cost-efficient solutions for multiple products

The benefits of gaining EPDs on your products are well documented and can help your company stand out among the competition (find out more now). However, if you manufacture a wide range of products, you might be concerned about the financial impact of gaining EPD documents for each one.

At Blue Marble we understand that the process of gaining individual EPDs can be expensive as each EPD document needs to be third-party verified and published by a program operator. Most charge per verified and published EPD document so, if you manufacture a range of products and need multiple EPD documents, the costs can escalate.

This is why we always scope out a project correctly to help you stay within your budget. We also advise on money-saving strategies, such as how to successfully group products into EPD documents.

The challenge of grouping EPDs

Often the first stage in any consultation with Blue Marble on EPD production is how to group product ranges into a number of EPD documents. The challenge is that the ideal approach to any EPD is to study one specific product in considerable detail.

Fundamental to an LCA or EPD is the concept of a ‘declared unit’; this is the unit to which all the data relates. It is often 1 kg of product (e.g. aggregates), or 1 m2 of product (e.g. tiling or panels), or 1 m3 of product (e.g. wood items) or even just one unit (in the case of furniture items, for example).

Unsurprisingly, if the data relates to 1 m² of product and that product comes in two thicknesses, with two different masses per m², then the environmental impact will differ between the two products.

It is likely that the two products will have different quantities of raw materials and more energy will be required to transport a heavier product than a lighter product. Manufacturing time and energy consumption may also differ and one product may require more packaging than another.

Help to group products into EPD documents

For some manufacturers it will be important to have a number of EPDs for each type of product. This may be for marketing reasons, for instance, because each product has a specific target customer.

Where manufacturers are looking to group products, Blue Marble always starts with an assessment of their product range to decipher the most effective way of carrying out the grouping process.

The rules on grouping vary depending on which program operator you publish with, but most program operators will allow some form of averaging. Averaged EPDs are common and are a way of grouping multiple products with similar properties and a similar purpose into a single EPD document.

The slight disadvantage of an averaged EPD is that the results of the average may appear worse than some of the individual products. This is because the average will necessarily group good-performing products with poor-performing products. This is something to bear in mind as architects and housebuilders (the users of EPDs) increasingly tend to seek and specify more sustainable materials.

Differentiating between products within a single EPD document

Another option for products that differ within a range is to create a scaling table as an annex to the EPD. The results from a scaling table can either scale linearly or in a non-linear fashion.

It may also be possible to decide on a declared unit, where the results can be multiplied by the quantity of product required. For example, aluminium profiles may come in a range of sizes and types, but they are all made from the same material using the same manufacturing process. In this case, 1kg may be an appropriate declared unit, and the person using the EPD document simply multiplies the results by the number of kilograms of product they are specifying.

Blue Marble is here to help with streamlining your EPDs

If you would like advice on how to group product ranges into a number of EPD documents, feel free to book a consultation.