Sustainability and EPDs of Construction Materials – Coming Soon!
Posted on Tue, Nov 29, 2011 @ 10:03 AM
Sustainability practices and EPDs - what do they mean? When it comes to Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), a great analogy is with the food we buy.
We’ve all seen nutrition labels on the food products we buy. They’re a great help in deciding what foods to buy, and which not to buy, based on the nutritional content of the product. For most of us, if the label indicates something negative about the food product, such as too much sodium, we won’t buy the food. It just doesn’t fit into our overall diet regimen.
EPDs, or Environmental Product Declarations, are similar to nutritional labels, but will be used for a whole host of products in the future – including concrete, asphalt, steel, wood, and other construction materials.
But what might a “nutritional label” look like for a product like concrete or asphalt? The Environmental Product Declaration will likely identify key sustainability indicators such as:
- The Carbon Footprint of the product.
- The amount of energy embedded within the product.
- The amount of resources, renewable and non-renewable, used for the product.
- The amount of water used to make the product (the “water footprint”).
- Pollutant emissions associated with the product.
- An overall Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) review of the product.
How are these EPDs created? There are standard procedures to create them, designed to ensure they are credible, consistent, and unbiased, following an ISO standard (ISO14025), and based on Product Category Rules that determine how these types of EPDs are generated.
And, much like food labels, that EPDs can be used to judge one product against another!
Want to see what EPDs look like?
What does this mean to the construction materials industries? In the future (and not too far off), each individual product will likely carry an EPD, including each individual specific mix design of concrete or asphalt. You wouldn’t have a nutritional label for “bread”, anymore that you will likely have one for “concrete” – it will be product (or in this case, mix design) specific.
What does this mean? We’re getting one step closer to the day when all products are going to be judged on their overall environmental impact. Developers and contractors will be obligated to select the products with the least overall environmental footprint if they want to “build green”.
So, much like you currently choose your food based on the nutritional label, the choice of construction materials in the future may be based on the EPD.
For now, I think your best bet is to find out as much as you can about the sustainable attributes of the product you make – as well as making any improvements you can – in order to stay ahead of this trend.
EPDs are coming – where do you stand?
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