What good is a general industry-average EPD (Environmental Product Declaration)?

Learn why a generic, industry-average EPD can be both a good & bad thing.

When we’re working with clients on a program of sustainable practices for their businesses, we often get around to recommending they consider Environmental Product Declarations for their products. Sometimes the response we get in return is “we’re not going to get our own, we’re going to use the general, industry average created by our industry trade group”.

For some, getting a tailored EPD might be too costly, or could even reveal their products are worse than the industry average. But for others who really have their process dialed in, a generic EPD is short-selling yourself. Let's go over why and cover some pros and cons of generic vs specific EPDs.

Why should I care about EPDs in the first place?

For many, they are becoming more and more requested by customers. Whether it's preferential treatment or a way to compare apples to oranges (think about building a building and comparing wood vs steel vs concrete), for others, it's a minimum requirement to even get a chance to bid. In short, savvy customers, government agencies, and even governments themselves are saying if you want work from us, we want to see an EPD.

It's like getting a nutritional label. If you want to market a product as "healthy", customers want to see what that really means. Let's use ice cream as an example. There might be an overall "average" set of nutritional facts for ice cream. Great! All vanilla ice cream is the same, right? Sort of yes, but sort of no. Let's say you make ice cream with low-quality milk from the other side of the country, so you need to add a bunch of sugar to make it taste better. You might be making an ice cream that is significantly unhealthier than your competitors, meaning the industry average hides how bad you're doing. That's great! But, most customers aren't going to want an "average", they want to know exactly what they're eating.

Now let's suppose this vanilla ice cream you make is using high-quality milk with no sugar added and is substantially healthier than the average. If you were to use the average nutrition facts, you'd be short-selling yourself! You'd want to market you're using better ingredients to make a healthier product!

Let's again suppose you find our your biggest customer is considering buying cake instead of ice cream because they aren't sure what's healthier. How can you compare... with a nutrition label! You can put two items side by side and compare the ingredients and nutritional values of both products.

One last thought - if your customer said I'm not buying any food from anyone unless there's a nutritional label attached, you better start figuring out the nutritional values of your food ASAP or else you won't be able to sell to them again!

Industry average EPDs do have value sometimes.

As I just laid out with the ice cream example, there are times when the industry average can be helpful. There are times when that might be your best bet or the only thing you need to be able to sell a product.

There are other times when and industry-average EPD does more harm than good, by either overpromising or underselling you and your product.

If you haven’t quite been ready to leap into the world of sustainability, then at least having something can get you started when your customers ask. If they want one, you can provide one for your widget, ice cream, concrete, whatever, even if it might not accurately reflect your individual sustainability profile or the specific metrics of your product.

Another benefit is that at least it provides a benchmark for the industry, and if you do better, then you have an automatic marketing advantage, as in “hey, we do much better than the average, so you ought to buy from us”!

Like a lot of other aspects of sustainability, it comes down to you, your business model and interests, and what you’re looking to use it for. For some, maybe an industry-average one is good enough. For others, they might not ever consider one, since they consider themselves to be above average.

No matter what path you plan on perusing with environmental product declarations, it can be a tricky one. If you have any questions or comments about product category rules, life cycle assessments, and environmental product declarations - or ice cream - reach out! You can contact us at info@rmagreen.com, click here to contact us or give us a call anytime at 888-RMA-0230 to learn how we can help your facility deal with EPDs.