Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are essential for a low-carbon future. They provide detailed information on the environmental impact of producing a material as well as a material’s intended applications, performance and specifications, and how and where it was produced.
You can think of an EPD as a nutrition label that tells us the global warming potential (GWP) and other environmental impacts of a material or product. By generating and utilizing both Product and Industry EPDs, we can make more sustainable decisions on building projects by comparing the environmental impacts of different materials.
Manufacturers play an integral role in EPD generation. They are the catalysts for creating the labels for their products that can then be read by contractors, owners, and designers during decision-making. Let’s take a look at what manufacturers need to do to get an EPD and help make it easier for AEC professional sectors to prioritize carbon reductions on their building projects.
Steps to Get an EPD
Getting an EPD involves a few steps. Here’s what you’ll need to do:
- Provide data on your product’s inputs, energy usage, and chemical emissions.
- Analyze data and create a life cycle assessment (LCA) and draft EPD with sustainability professionals.
- Standardize your declaration via Product Category Rules.
- Tap a Program Operator to verify and publish your EPD.
Let’s delve into each step required to generate an EPD.
Find Sustainability Professionals and Program Operators
Our EC3 tool offers a comprehensive, third-party verified EPD database. It also lists service providers who assist manufacturers in creating Product EPDs or industry associations in creating Industry EPDs. These providers are knowledgeable about the EPD generation process and can connect you with experts for any steps they don’t cover.
We recommend partnering with qualified service providers familiar with your industry. EC3’s lists, categorized by product type, are a good starting point. A provider’s presence in this list indicates only whether EC3 has successfully digitized EPDs in the relevant category from that service provider.
Determine Your Product Category Rules
A Product Category Rule (PCR) sets sector-specific rules to ensure accurate data and fair comparisons. PCRs must comply with general Life Cycle Assessment standards. Comparing results from different or overly generic PCRs can be misleading.
If a PCR doesn’t exist for your product category, you can contact an industry association, other manufacturers, LCA service providers, or Program Operators to develop one. Our team can also assist in initiating these conversations.
Collect Data Points about Your Product/Material
Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) evaluate environmental impacts of products and processes based on resource consumption, emissions, and wastes throughout their life cycle – from production to end-of-life. LCAs are essential for receiving an EPD because they provide a thorough assessment of the full environmental footprint of a product. LCAs follow standardized methodologies, which ensure consistency and comparability of environmental data. The data gathered during a life-cycle assessment forms the foundation for creating an EPD.
Some EPDs cover only the product stage, while others include construction, use, and end-of-life stages; the scope is defined in the PCR. Creating an LCA report often requires access to proprietary information, such as product formulations and supplier relationships, which remains confidential. The EPD, however, is a summary of the LCA results and typically does not disclose proprietary information. If necessary, you can choose to increase (but not decrease) an impact to maintain confidentiality while demonstrating environmental performance. This decision balances the value of confidentiality against a more favorable impact comparison.
Get Third-Party Verification & EPD Publication
A third-party verifier, usually an LCA professional approved by the Program Operator, must verify the LCA report used to generate your EPD. The verifier ensures the report adheres to LCA standards and PCR rules. Some service providers offer tools that generate pre-verified reports, but the EPD still needs full third-party verification.
Once verified, the EPD can be registered with a Program Operator and published in various formats, including traditional PDFs and digital formats like OpenEPD and ILCD+EPD. Digital publication is faster, less expensive, and easier to update than paper or PDF formats.
The Power of Data for Climate Action
By following these steps, manufacturers can generate EPDs that help the AEC industry make more informed and sustainable choices. Building Transparency advocates for broad and swift action across the building industry to address embodied carbon’s role in climate change, including the generation of Product and Industry EPDs. We host various tools that foster climate change awareness and advocacy. If you’re interested in learning more about our EPD database, click here. If you’d like to sign up for the free EC3 tool, click here.