The overall goal of an EPD is to provide relevant and verified information to meet the various communication needs. An important aspect of EPD is to provide the basis of a fair comparison of products and services by its environmental performance.
Why EPDs
The overall goal of an EPD is to provide relevant and verified information to meet the various communication needs. An important aspect of EPD is to provide the basis of a fair comparison of products and services by its environmental performance. EPDs can reflect the continuous environmental improvement of products and services over time and are able to communicate and add up relevant environmental information along a product’s supply chain.
EPDs are based on principles inherent in the ISO standard for Type III environmental declarations (ISO 14025) giving them a wide-spread international acceptance.
Examples on how to use EPDs in different applications are described in the following sections:
- Building assessment schemes(e.g. LEED, BREEAM, GreenStar and HQE)
- Green public procurement(GPP)
- Business-to-business communication
- Business-to-consumer communication
- Environmental management systems(e.g. ISO 14001 and EMAS)
- Ecodesign
Can We Compare EPDs?
Yes, for two EPDs covering the same product category, LCA methodology, environmental, indicators, additional environmental information, life cycle stages covered, EPD validity, etc.
Achieving these requirements is most easily met by two EPD registered based on the same Product Category Rules developed based on the general LCA methodology in the same EPD programme. Other EPDs may also fulfil these requirements, but this puts additional requirements on the reader of the EPD to understand if the information is comparable or not.
For construction products, Section 5.3 of EN 15804 sets additional requirements for comparability, e.g. that the EPD shall be cover the full life cycle and be in the building context to provide a tool of comparison.
