Increasing importance and digital tools cause EPD figures to skyrocket

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is an internationally recognized format that provides the required information in accordance with the ISO 14025 and EN 15804 standards. In order to be able to pass on quality-assured environmental information, it is therefore highly advisable for building product manufacturers to publish EPDs for their products.
Both the public sector and private building owners are increasingly demanding transparent information on the environmental impact of products in the form of EPDs. The fact that the industry is meeting this demand is impressively demonstrated by the number of published environmental product declarations. While there were only just over 7,000 published building product EPDs in 2020, the 23,000 mark was broken last year (source: eco-platform.org).

But the development continues: the amendment to the EU Construction Products Regulation brings significant changes for the harmonization of construction products. For the first time, the EU Commission is authorized to set binding environmental requirements for construction products at EU level. In future, manufacturers will have to include sustainability indicators in their declarations of performance in accordance with the EPD standard EN 15804.

How does the process of EPD creation and publication work?
EPDs are published by a so-called program owner, e.g. the Institut Bauen und Umwelt e. V. (Building and Environment Institute). Before publication can take place, however, the environmental impacts of the building product in question must be determined by preparing a life cycle assessment. Often, however, the know-how for this is not available in the company. With more than 20 years of experience in the preparation of life cycle assessments, the SKZ is happy to provide companies with its expertise as a partner. The SKZ experts work together with companies to collect data and calculate product-specific environmental impacts. The entire process is documented in a project report in accordance with standards. The EPD document is created in parallel, usually in an online mask of the program holder. Once the project report and the EPD have been created, the documents are subjected to verification. For this purpose, the program owner commissions independent verifiers with proven expertise. Once the verification process is complete, the EPD can be published. The overall process currently takes around 1 year.

Tools simplify the EPD process
In addition to the creation of individual EPDs, the SKZ also offers the creation of EPDs using a calculation tool tailored to a company’s construction products. This enables companies to create EPDs themselves. For this purpose, an existing basic tool is adapted for the specific company. The EPD program owner checks the tool once and releases it for the creation of EPDs. EPDs can then be created for all products in the portfolio and published quickly after a short verification process. Companies can use the tool to decide at short notice for which products they need an EPD and control the creation process themselves. This enables them to react quickly to market requirements and to provide information at any time when information on the environmental impact of their construction products is required. The tool also offers the opportunity to compare the environmental impacts of different product variants and to understand what influence material and energy flows have on the results. In this way, more sustainable production alternatives can also be identified so that ecological product optimizations can be initiated.

If you have any questions about the EPD creation process and tool solutions for EPDs, please contact the SKZ.