Strengthening Environmental Product Declarations: Communicating the environmental impacts of construction products accurately and transparently
With approximately 97% of the EU building stock to be upgraded, sufficiency and proactive material selection can significantly reduce extraction and embodied carbon in the construction sector. But a more sustainable material selection can only happen if the information on the environmental performance of products is reliable, comparable, and robust.
To disclose environmental information, Environmental Products Declarations (EPDs) are the most used tool in the construction sector, with over 10,000 EPDs registered in 2021 in the EU. The disclosure of environmental impacts, previously voluntary, in an important step forward, will become mandatory under the new Construction Products Regulation (CPR), providing an opportunity to address critical gaps in EPDs.
This paper addresses one gap in particular: transparency. The transparency of databases providing data for EPDs is often overlooked but significantly impacts their reliability. To drive the decarbonisation of construction products across the EU, the foundation of how environmental information is calculated and disclosed must be improved to cover full environmental impacts.
