Answering your frequently asked questions about EPDs
As Environmental Management Consultants, we speak to a lot of people who are confused about Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Lots of manufacturers know they need EPDs for their products – to prove their environmental credentials and gain competitive edge in the market. But they’re often uncertain about the cost, how long it will take, and what’s involved. Some are at an early stage, and just want to define EPD, and understand what is involved.
Below we answer your top questions about EPDs, so you can understand what’s ahead as you embark on your own EPD project. Reach out if you’d like to discuss your EPD requirements with our expert team.
How do you define EPD?
To define EPD, it is a summary document of the Life Cycle Assessment that you conduct 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, an Environmental Product Declaration also includes environmental data, in the form of tables at the end of the EPD document.
An environmental product declaration is highly accurate, standardised, and verified. You can discover Blue Marble’s EPD offering here.
Watch the full length intro to EPDsHow long does it take to produce an EPD?
At Blue Marble we start every project with a kick-off call where we physically map the product system boundaries and supply chain. That allows us to produce a bespoke questionnaire, and from there it’s over to the manufacturer to gather the primary data. This process can take anywhere from a few weeks to many months, but averages out at around eight weeks. As consultants, we’re on hand to push it forwards.
Once we receive the manufacturer’s data, it takes around six weeks to conduce the LCA modelling. We then share the draft EPD documents in the background report for approval by the manufacturer. The verification timelines depend on which program operator you choose to publish with, but may typically be around six weeks.
In all, an efficient project could take four to five months. Although at least two months of that we reserve for gathering the primary data for the LCA.
Book a call with an expertHow much does an EPD cost?
There are a number of variables that affect the cost of an EPD. These include: product and supply chain complexity, whether it’s a single product or an average, the extent of lifecycle stages you wish to consider, and which program operator you publish with.
As a rough rule of thumb, a budget of £10,000 ought to be sufficient to cover most standard projects.
You also have self-serve software options. The initial investment may be higher, and you’ll need to divert in house resource to developing the LCA. But there are economies of scale when you have a large number of EPDs to produce.
It’s important to remember that an EPD is valid for five years. So as an investment, with recurring value over those five years, it is an affordable exercise.
Read more about EPDsWhat internal resource is required to produce an EPD?
When conducting a lifecycle assessment to produce an EPD, there are two main data sources you need:
- Primary data (foreground data) from the manufacturer
- Secondary data (background data) drawn from databases
As LCA consultants, we require the manufacturer of the product to provide us with primary data. This is all data that should already be in existence, so there are no additional calculations. These are things like transportation distances, technical specification of the materials, quantity of the materials you use. It works best when there is someone who the manufacturer appoints within their internal team to collate and gather that data.
We support the data collection by providing a bespoke questionnaire to the manufacturer, by first going through a supply chain mapping exercise. We then share the questionnaire with suppliers of raw materials, or fill it in with known data from various sources.
There will be a need for someone within the manufacturer’s team to provide a coordinating role on behalf of the manufacturer, but that should be a relatively light touch responsibility in terms of receiving the data and passing it on to us for checking and verifying. If you’re using software, it’s a lot more resource intensive internally, and a consultant will take most of that away.