What is an EPD?

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) according to ISO 14025 is a powerful, condensed document that enables a company to showcase and prove its products´ environmental impact.

It is a standardized document following a Product Category Rules (PCR) according to EN 15804 and consisting of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14044. After the creation of an EPD it is verified by a third party and published by an approved EPD-system.

Thanks to the fact that an EPD is regulated and standardized, different products’ environmental impacts can be compared, allowing stakeholders to base decisions on it.

How does the creation process look like?

The creation of an EPD is a linear process with clear activities that are known in advance. In average, from start of the project to a published EPD, the time period is on average 1,5-2 months. However, the time period may be affected by the number of factories to include, the variety of products and components an EPD should cover and how easily accessible and well-structured the information and data are.

The following steps of the process are as follows:

A good way to get started is to contact our partner Eando -> eando.se. They are experts in performing LCA and creating EPDs.

How can you create EPDs in a cost-efficient way?

When creating an EPD you need to do it according to the standards, but you can still do an EPD in many ways within the acceptance of the standards. There are several aspects that can affect how you choose to create your EPD, but the most import aspects are the following three:

Firstly, you should have in mind that the life cycle needs to reflect the reality. If for example your factory or supply chain may change or that the standards are being updated, then you might need to update your models and EPDs, but you do not want to redo all the work. This means that you should build flexible life cycle models to be able to update the calculations and EPDs in a seamless way, without having to start over.

Secondly, you could benefit from including the whole portfolio from the start to be able to manage the creation of EPDs in a cost-efficient way. To manage this you need to, among other things, have a good understanding of all the processes and to navigate in an optimal way in the division of products between EPDs. This will both minimize the amount of work drastically and it will also support the first aspect by optimizing for a seamless future update of calculations and EPDs.

Thirdly, you might want to be able to capitalize on the investment by having the commercial aspect in mind. To be able to get a return on investment you should make the EPDs easily accessible and understandable for all your stakeholders. You can do this in two ways, either you create one EPD per product to get product specific values (which is an expensive alternative) or you put as many of your products into one EPD and then you publish your products on Prodikt. The alternative with Prodikt results in product-specific values as well but it is much more cost-effective.

Prodikt.com is a sustainability platform that enables you to market and declare both the technical performance and sustainability profile of your products. It is used by property owners, architects, consultants and entrepreneurs in the selection of products and the analyze of buildings regarding climate, circularity and health.

If you would like to get started with the development of EPDs, contact Eando.

If you already have EPDs and would like to exploit their business potential, contact Prodikt.