EPD and life cycle assessment
What an EPD is
Section titled “What an EPD is”An environmental product declaration: a verified document in a standard structure reporting a construction product’s environmental impacts along its life cycle.
Its point is comparability: the same methodology, the same boundaries, the same units. That is what makes it usable for design decisions — unlike manufacturers’ marketing claims.
What it contains
Section titled “What it contains”Broken down by life cycle stage:
- production: raw materials, transport, manufacture,
- construction: transport to site, installation,
- use: maintenance, replacement, energy,
- end of life: demolition, transport, processing, waste,
- benefits beyond the system boundary: the benefit from recycling, for example.
That last one matters particularly for steel, because a significant part of the material returns to the material flow.
Building-level assessment
Section titled “Building-level assessment”The building’s life cycle assessment is assembled from the individual products’ data. It shows how large the embodied and the operational impacts are, and where to intervene.
The result is often surprising: in a well-insulated building the share of the embodied impact grows, because the operational energy consumption has fallen.
What design can learn from it
Section titled “What design can learn from it”Less material
Section titled “Less material”The best environmental decision is the material not installed. An optimised structure has directly lower impact.
Long service life
Section titled “Long service life”What does not need replacing generates no further impact.
Separability
Section titled “Separability”The end-of-life stage comes out better if the materials can be separated. Deconstruction and recycling.
Real data
Section titled “Real data”Product-level data instead of general claims. If a manufacturer has an EPD, that is worth more for design than any sustainability slogan.
The direction of travel
Section titled “The direction of travel”With the renewal of EU product regulation, reporting environmental data is becoming increasingly mandatory and uniform — which gives design a better input too. The new construction products regulation.
The point
Section titled “The point”Sustainability is measurable — but only if we work with data. The EPD is what makes comparison possible.