Why EPDs are Important
In today’s global economy, the challenge of managing an entire supply and production chain is a complex task facing producers in every industry. When it comes to manufacturing environmentally sustainable products, the plethora of often-misleading claims about the environmental profile of components and supplies magnifies this challenge. What manufacturers, architects, designers and purchasers require is objective and unbiased environmental information presented in a manner that eases comparisons between similar products.
Buyers and product specifiers are increasingly demanding environmental information about the products they select. For example, research conducted by an independent third party for UL Environment in October 2010 found that more than 90 percent of architects and building designers surveyed have researched, specified or purchased so-called green products during the past year, and are continuing to seek products with accompanying environmental impact assessments.1 Buyers and specifiers are driving the demand for environmentally preferable products, but they increasingly require transparent information that makes product comparison more efficient and effective.
The widespread adoption and use of industry standards provides manufacturers with uniform pathways to efficiently bring products to market, and provides buyers with confidence about a product’s safety and performance. In a similar fashion, EPDs represent an important, multi-purpose tool that helps manufacturers and buyers more easily understand the environmental impact of the products they produce and buy, allowing them to make more informed purchasing decisions. As such, EPDs are an important element in the overall effort to reduce environmentally damaging production practices and preserve the availability of important natural resources.
There are several ways in which the use of EPDs helps to achieve these goals:
• As a management tool to monitor product environmental data and to use this data to improve product environmental performance
• As a communication tool to provide unbiased product environmental information to enhance overall awareness of the environmental impact of products
• As an evaluation/assessment tool for benchmarking environmental information and for evaluating and making product selection decisions
• As a procurement tool to achieve government, institutional or corporate environmental objectives
• As an action tool to broadly disseminate product environmental information to the public, and to identify concerns about efforts to improve product environmental sustainability