We can save the planet one Environmental Product Declaration at a time

We need  a method  to measure the impact of our  choices, actions, and  claims.  One with credible values that replaces complexity and confusion with clarity and confidence.  One that simplifies how we talk about and directly considers our climate impact. We need EPDs. We’ve been talking about Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) at Vestre for some time now and last year we published our first catalogue that lists the embodied carbon for every product we make. We were the first furniture manufacturer in the world to do so after we spent a couple of years mapping our products’ carbon footprint: interesting, demanding, and rewarding work!

As a Norwegian manufacturer of outdoor furniture, much of this has gone under the radar since we service a tiny niche of the construction sector, both here in the UK and globally. But for us, publishing this information is vital if we’re to achieve our ambition of being the most environmentally friendly furniture manufacturer on the planet.

So, what is an EPD and why are we committed to providing this information? An EPD is a transparent, standardised, and verifiable document that reports on a product’s environmental impacts and communicates its environmental performance over its lifetime. Absolutely key is that the data is created through a holistic, life-cycle assessment (LCA) and that it’s verified by an independent third party. This ensures every EPD is impartial, standardised, accurate, and reliable so that it can be registered and published. Our EPDs conform

to EN158054:2012 and are verified by EPD-Norge.

An EPD essentially details a product’s carbon footprint (or Global Warming Potential) and additional environmental impacts of production, such as acidification, ozone depletion, and water consumption.

The process requires the collation of detailed data on every aspect of our materials and processes (including raw materials, waste etc) throughout the entire life cycle of resource use, processing, manufacturing, distribution, use, and end of life (recycling). Through this standard format, an EPD provides transparent information on key environmental impacts, and allows scrutiny of purported "sustainable" or low-carbon products; it also enables the receipt of credits for green building standards and regulations, such as LEED and BREEAM. The use of EPDs supports the reduction of carbon emissions as it enables direct comparison of the impacts of any number of products in order to select those with the least impact.

EPDs are much like the nutritional values found on food labels. They don’t promise health benefits, but they provide critical data at a glance. We know this information fully supports our marketing claims (including that of being the world’s most sustainable furniture manufacturer) and will bring about the informed specification and ultimate purchasing of our products. From a client and procurement perspective, EPDs make it easier to specify environmentally superior products. We hope that soon, all stakeholders of a construction project will demand EPDs as a matter of course.