What is an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)?
In the video below, we explain that an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a summary document of a product’s life cycle assessment. It is typically 10-15 pages long and includes technical product details and environmental data. Producing an EPD involves the input of the product manufacturer, their suppliers, LCA consultants, third-party verifiers and a program operator. Standards including EN 15804+A2 are followed; this specifies how the life cycle assessment should be conducted for products for use in the built environment.
If you’d like our help with your business’ EPD requirements, get in touch here.
If you’d prefer to read the video transcript, you’ll find it below.
Background: understanding Life Cycle Assessment
In order to understand what an EPD is, first of all we need to have a basic understanding of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Within the life cycle of a typical product, there are the raw materials, the product is manufactured, it’s transported, the product is used, and then it reaches the end of its life.
At each of those life cycle stages, resources are consumed, including water, energy and materials. Correspondingly, there are environmental impacts at each of those life cycle stages, and they may result in acid rain potential, climate change, water pollution, or ozone layer depletion.
Once we understand what the environmental impacts are of the product’s life cycle, we can start to do something about it. So with raw materials, we can increase the recycled content. With manufacturing, we can look at ways of saving energy and reducing emissions. With the transportation, we can look to reduce transportation distances, and other ways of packaging the product. With the use phase, we can design the product in such a way that it’s more energy efficient. And at the end of life, again, we can design the product in a way that it increases the reuse potential of it or its recyclability.
What is an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)?
An EPD is just a summary document of the Life Cycle Assessment that you have conducted on your product. Typically 10 to 15 pages long, it contains technical product details (nothing confidential, but technical details like you might find in a technical data sheet). Importantly, and Environmental Product Declaration also includes environmental data, and that’s in the form of tables at the end of the EPD document. It’s considered to be highly accurate, standardised, and it’s verified as well. You can discover Blue Marble’s EPD offering here.
How is an EPD produced?
Typically the parties involved are the manufacturer, the supplier of raw materials to that manufacturer, an LCA consultant such as Blue Marble (if you choose to use one), a third party verifier who verifies that the LCA has been done correctly, and then you have a program operator, which is the organization which publishes the EPD. That may seem like a lot of parties, but it is specifically designed to be that way to give rigor to the process and to increase the accuracy of the results.
What standards are followed?
The key standard if you’re producing an EPD in the construction industry is EN 15804+A2. That’s what’s known as the core product category rules. It specifies how you do your Life Cycle Assessment for a product to be used in the built environment. It breaks down the life cycle stages into a series of modules.
A1-A3
Modules A1-3 are the raw materials, then the transportation of those raw materials to a place of manufacturing. The manufacturing process obviously uses energy, and may use water. There may be process direct emissions, and there may be ancillary materials, which are materials that don’t go in the product, but are involved in the manufacturing process. These modules are what’s known as “Cradle to Gate”.
A4-5
Then you can look beyond those first modules at the next, which consider transportation to site. Factors included are the installation of the product (that may use energy) and any installation losses.
B1-7
The next modules cover the use of the product. Some products have a very minimal impact in use phase, others have a very high impact. Some may have operational energy use or operational water use, and some may require maintenance or repair during their life cycle.
C1-4
Then what happens to the product at the end of its life? You’ll need to consider it’s removal from the building, transportation to waste treatment, the waste treatment processing, the recycling activities. If a percentage of the product can’t be recycled, then also the eventual disposal of that. With EN 15804+A2, the minimum you need to consider is cradle to gate plus end of life.
D
This module involves looking at the benefits and loads beyond the system boundaries. So say your product contained a material that could be recycled, you consider the recycling of that and also how you avoided impact by providing that material to a subsequent life cycle. You get to claim a little bit of benefit back to your life cycle for the provision of those recyclers.
The EPD will also be done in accordance with the ISO standards on Life Cycle Assessment: ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. The third party verification will be done in accordance with ISO 14025. Then certain program operators have additional product category rules that are specific to certain categories of products, in addition to the core product category rules of EN15804. You also have general program instructions, which program operators use as a way of defining certain things, for example, the rules around averaging, where you are looking to group multiple products within a single EPD document.
What are the benefits of producing an EPD?
Conducting the LCA will allow you to highlight the environmental hot spots in your product. The data and charts produced can clearly indicate where the majority of the impacts lie for your particular product. It will then allow you to do something about those hot spots, and to make improvements to the environmental performance of your product.
It will give you the opportunity to be more confident in your environmental reporting. Importantly, an EPD also allows you to be specified as a material of choice more easily.
When software is used to conduct a Whole Life Carbon Assessment on a building, the user will search for an EPD and it will be available in the database for selection and use in the assessment. So the fact that you have an EPD will mean that you will appear in the databases that are being used for doing building assessments, and it will also allow you to be prepared for upcoming legislation.
At the moment, EPDs exist predominantly in a voluntary, market-driven situation. That will change with the introduction of regulation in Europe, which will regulate construction products. With the gradual transition to that state, you’ll be required to supply environmental data for your product to be specified on the shelves in Europe. Discover more business benefits of EPDs here.
I hope that was helpful, thanks very much for your time.
If you’d like to speak to an expert here at Blue Marble, about your own EPD, LCA and other environmental reporting needs, get in touch here.