Environmental Product Declaration

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a standardized way of quantifying the embodied environmental impacts of a product or system. Often EPD’s are used as part of a ‘life cycle assessment’ where a number of products or functional units are assessed as part of a whole system and over a time period, for example a building or structure should be assessed holistically over its whole lifetime for both it’s material components and ‘in use’ performance so that it’s material components are placed in the context of use and performance.

The information declared in EPD’s includes data on the environmental impacts of raw materials acquisition, energy use and efficiency, content of materials and chemical substances, emissions to air, soil and water and waste generation.