One way of helping our customers find solutions that reduce the environmental footprint of the built environment is to create transparency around the environmental footprint of our products. We do this through environmental product declarations (EPDs). We have EPDs for more than 200 products for buildings. It means we can provide an easy one-stop-shop paints and coatings solution for sustainable building projects, because EPDs of various products can be combined into a single project.

What is an EPD?

An environmental product declaration (EPD) is a standardized, verified and registered document which summarizes the information on a product’s environmental performance. An EPD is based on the results of a lifecycle assessment (LCA), a scientific approach used to assess environmental footprint in line with the internationally recognized ISO 14040 standard series. The declaration is drawn up according to a guideline which sets out standardized analysis and comparison rules for all types of building materials and products.

There are also specific standards for developing the declarations and labels that the LCA is used to support. In the context of EPDs, this is commonly the ISO 14025: Environmental labels and declarations – Type III environmental declarations. The standards ensure the calculations behind the LCA and EPD are methodologically solid.  

What does EPD include?

1. A description of the product and the manufacturer.
2. Information from the company, the LCA practitioner, verifier, program operator and certification body.
3. The environmental performance of the product over the included lifecycle stages. This is the essence of an EPD and is based on the product’s LCA.

How is EPD used?

EPDs can feed into whole building assessment schemes, other comparative tools and building information modelling (BIM) CAD software. Environmental labels and/or declarations have the overarching goal of stimulating the potential for market-driven continuous environmental improvement. EPDs have the following goals:

1.    To objectively and transparently communicate information on the environmental performance of products, according to the lifecycle of a product (i.e. based on LCA).

2.    To allow purchasers and/or users to make a fair comparison of the environmental performance of products in a lifecycle perspective

3.    To encourage improvement of environmental performance.

Applications:

·         Green public procurement

·         Green building assessment schemes

·         Ecodesign

·         Environmental management systems

·         Business-to-business communication

·         Business-to-consumer communication