Environmental Product Declarations for Building Materials Reuse: An Essential Tool

Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are a powerful tool for reuse businesses and NGOs to provide key information on the environmental impacts of their goods and services.

An EPD is comparable to a nutrition facts label on food products, instead of calories, an EPD reveals the environmental footprint of a product.

It is a concise summary of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which evaluates the environmental impacts of a product from its creation to its disposal. This makes it easier for stakeholders to easily and quickly assess the environmental performance of goods and services. EPDs are increasingly becoming the norm because they provide independent 3rd-party verification of environmental data while the company can ensure confidentiality for their proprietary business data. Governments and the private sector already rely on Type III 3rd-party EPDs for green procurement and building rating systems. For companies working with reclaimed materials, EPDs offer a means to quantify and communicate the intuitive lower impacts of reuse using a data-driven process that the market, including green builders and architects, understands and values.

The benefits of creating an EPD also go beyond external marketing and green purchasing. The analysis required for the EPD involves detailed data on salvage and reuse processes at the organization level. This information can then be leveraged internally to identify areas for improvement, optimize energy usage, reduce costs, and reduce waste. 

Despite these benefits, there have been barriers to adopting EPDs in the reclaimed materials sector. Traditionally, companies using EPDs have been larger firms with the resources to invest in the process. Smaller companies, especially in the reused building materials sector, have found the cost of EPDs prohibitive. The complexity of data collection and concerns of ensuring consistent and accurate information have further limited their widespread adoption.