1,000 environmental product declarations now registered
There is a growing need for information describing the impact that goods and services have on the environment. This is made clear by the rapid rise in the number of registrations in the international EPD system. This autumn the programme, run by a subsidiary of the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, has registered a thousand environmental declarations. The biggest increase is in construction products.
– This has been a continuing trend for several years now. It is essential to expose environmental impacts transparently throughout entire life cycles, says Kristian Jelse, Program Manager for the International EPD System. The Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) system is an information system that objectively describes the environmental impact of products and services in a life-cycle perspective. EPDs target all types of products and services – transports, construction products, furniture, textiles, groceries etc. Since the launch of Swedish predecessor to the international EPD system in the late 1990s, 1,000 environmental product declarations have been registered. Half of these were registered in the period 2014-2017, indicating that the interest has grown enormously in recent years. –Today the biggest increase can be seen in the construction products category. This is probably due to an increased focus on sustainable building, an increased demand for information dissemination, and the European construction industries decision to communicate environmental information on a voluntary basis, says Kristian Jelse. After construction products, the biggest increase can be seen in the groceries category. Here Italy and Spain are the countries topping the league when it comes to registering EPDs, for example products such as milk, yogurt, pasta and cheese. During the past year, new, exciting product categories have emerged, and EPDs have been declared for aircraft, shoes and lifts. To date, products and services from 37 different countries have been registered in the international EPD system. In 2017, the company expanded international cooperation with organizations in India and Brazil. In addition to the Secretariat in Sweden, there are now regional contact persons in New Zealand and Australia (Australasian EPD Programme), India, Brazil, Chile and Mexico (EPD Latin America) and Turkey (EPD Turkey), as well as a helpdesk in China. Since 2014 the system has been managed by EPD International AB, a subsidiary of IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. For more information, please contact: Kristian Jelse, kristian@environdec.com, +46 (0)10-788 69 13 Website: www.environdec.com