EPD: Mechanism for environmental information and comparison between products
EPD: Mechanism for environmental information and comparison between products
The Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are documents that provide transparent and independently verified information relating to the environmental performance of the certified product or service based on its Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
They are regulated pursuant to the ISO 14025 standard and the standard itself indicated that the goal of the EPDs is to present the quantified environmental information on the life cycle of the certified products or services to enable the comparison between products, services or activities that fulfil with the same function.
An EPD can therefore be classified as an “Ecolabel”, even though its main difference compared to the other systems regulated by the ISO 14020 group of standards (ecolabels and environmental self-declations) is that minimum environmental requirements or values to be met are not defined in an EPD, but they rather set out the results of the LCA study carried out for the certified product in
order to be able to ofier an image of its environmental
performance.
The EPDs are now being widely used to show the consumer, customer or any stakeholder the environmental impact of the products, services and/or activities of the companies.
The reason for showcasing this environmental profile varies from company to company, but the basic objective in all cases is clear: To increase the competitiveness of the company and the positioning of its products on the market by means of developing a clear and transparent strategy of showcasing the environmental profile of its activity for all the stakeholders.
The stakeholders are often the very customers of the companies, which are interested in acquiring more environmentally-friendly products.
At other times, the customers of the company’s customers are the ones who are interested in obtaining information on the environmental profile of the products in their acquisitions, and the requirements that this information fiows through the supply chain means that it ends up reaching the first processing stages of the materials and the components.
Summary of the process to develop and check an EPD.