Environmental Product Declarations for Building Materials: Advantages, Limits, Developments

Abstract

This paper explains one of the environmental certifications tools that the construction sector can use to communicate the environmental performance of materials: the environmental product declaration (EPD) or type III environmental label. The need to be more transparent on environmental information is mandatory and can no longer be avoided. The paper describes the main environmental product declarations (EPDs), highlighting that over the last years the number of environmental product declarations (EPDs) published by the main European EPD programmes has increased. One of the main characteristics of the environmental product declaration (EPD) is the possibility to compare the environmental aspects of the considered products. The paper compares two case studies on the same material building type, published by two different EPD programmes, highlighting the difficulties of this comparison.