Perspectives on greener product development and manufacturing from Sustainable Minds, our partners, customers and contributors.

Transparency is the New Green In Product Selection and Specification: Everything you always wanted to know about EPDs – but were afraid to ask.

By Sustainable Minds on November 13, 2018

Recorded Wed, Nov 7 | 11am ET

Recorded Wed, Nov 20 | 11am ET

Are you able to use EPDs to make informed decisions about which products actually have better environmental performance?
If you answered “not really,” it’s not you, it’s us.

Program operators follow the ISO 14025 standard which lays out the principles and procedures for developing Type III environmental declaration (aka EPD) programs. The introduction states: The overall goal of a Type III environmental declaration is to encourage the demand for, and supply of, those products that cause less stress on the environment by:

  • Providing LCA-based and additional information on environmental aspects of products
  • Assisting purchasers and users to make informed comparisons between products
  • Encouraging improvement of environmental performance

EPDs from all North American program operators
EPDs from all North American program operators

Today's EPDs still have a ways to go to reliably achieve the stated goals.
This is because the content REQUIRED in an EPD is largely LCA data, and the information that could explain what the data means and what a manufacturer is doing to improve is OPTIONAL. With the critical need for manufacturers to be making actually higher-performing products, and for building professionals to specify and make sure they are purchased, all participants need more education. The tools we use must be improved to meet the demands of the coming years.

Who should attend: manufacturers, design professionals and industry groups who are proponents of simplification, standardization and delivering more useful and valuable environmental reporting tools to the marketplace.

Join us to learn about:

  • EPD content – what is required, optional and what info can make them more useful and meaningful

  • What can be learned about ‘embodied carbon’ and ‘circularity’ from an EPD

  • The value of industry-wide EPDs created as product group benchmarks

  • How PCRs and EPDs are created, who is involved

  • The responsibilities of a program operator and the efforts to simplify and standardize the process

  • How EPDs can help get products specified

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