ISO 14025:2006 Certification

An EPD — environmental product declaration — is a document which presents the environmental performance of a product. EPDs are a formal and internationally recognized way to present these impacts. Typically, Life Cycle Assessment is the method that calculates the impact data that supports the EPD. The completed EPD therefore serves as an environmental label or declaration. The LCA data calculations behind an EPD uses Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI). These calculations and processes follow the ISO 14040 standard. The ISO 14040 is the standard developed to describe the principles and framework of conducting LCA. There are also specific standards for developing the declarations and labels that the LCA is used to support. In the context of EPDs, this is commonly the ISO 14025: Environmental labels and declarations – Type III environmental declarations. The standards ensure the calculations behind the LCAs and EPD are uniform, so the finalized EPDs are comparable across sectors.

In general, environmental labels and/or declarations have the overarching goal of stimulating the potential for market-driven continuous environmental improvement. EPDs (Type III in particular) have the following goals:

• To objectively and transparently communicate information on the environmental aspects of products according to the life cycle stages of a product (i.e. based on LCA).
•  Allow purchasers and/or users to make a fair comparison of the environmental performance of products within a life cycle perspective.
•  They encourage improvement of environmental performance.

Furthermore, as a minimum, an EPD (Type III) must include:

• A description of the product and the manufacturer.
•  Information from the company, the LCA practitioner, verifier, program operator and certification body.
•  The environmental performance of the product over the included life cycle stages. This is the essence of EPD, and is based on the product LCA.