World's first social product declaration launched
IVL's subsidiary EPD International now publishes the world's first social product declaration (SPD), with the multinational company Hitachi Rail producing an SPD for one of its train models.
25 years after the world’s first Environmental Product Declaration was published by EPD International, it is now time for a new innovation – a Social Product Declaration (SPD) that presents third-party verified data on a product's or service's social sustainability performance in a life cycle perspective, from production to waste or recycling.
"We are delighted and proud to publish the first Social Product Declaration. An SPD gives a more complete picture of how a product affects society. We hope that more organizations and companies see this and choose to produce SPDs for their products and services”, says Gustav Sandin Albertsson, LCA expert at IVL and responsible for the work to enable verification and publication of SPDs at EPD International.
An SPD has similar uses to an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD): it can communicate information on the sustainability of a product or service throughout its life cycle. The strength of an EPD is also the strength of an SPD – its comparability and objectivity, which is ensured and verified by an independent third party.
What SPDs will be used for more specifically is now up to the market and other stakeholders. But according to Gustav Sandin Albertsson, it can be a powerful tool for improving the sustainability performance of supply chains and for public procurement.
"Ideally, it is used alongside EPDs to give a broader picture of products' sustainability performance. For organizations that take social issues seriously, an SPD can be useful to display, for instance in industries associated with poor working conditions."
An SPD documents all the work done by suppliers and other actors throughout the value chain, and evaluates their compliance with ethical and socially responsible labour practices, including employee safety, fair wages, gender equality and labour laws.
For more information, contact:
Gustav Sandin Albertsson, gustav.sandin@environdec.com tel. +46 (0)10-788 65 45
The social product declaration and related product category rules have been developed in collaboration with Marzia Traverso from RWTH Aachen University, Circular SRL and Hitachi Rail. It has been published in the international EPD system, which is owned by EPD International AB. Read more on the EPD International website.
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