Environmental Product Declarations
An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a comprehensive, internationally-harmonized report that documents the ways in which a product, throughout its lifecycle, affects the environment.
An EPD tells the lifecycle story of a product in a single, written report, focusing on information about a product’s environmental impact, such as global warming, ozone depletion, water pollution, ozone creation, and greenhouse gas emissions. An EPD can also include other impacts that are of particular interest to the discloser, such as human toxicity, risk and corporate social responsibility.
EPDs do not rank products, and the existence of an EPD for a product does not indicate that environmental performance criteria have been met. EPDs are a disclosure tool that helps purchasers better understand a product’s sustainable qualities and environmental repercussions so they can make more informed product selections.
EPDs can be developed after a product lifecycle assessment (LCA) is conducted, and are based on applicable product category rules (PCRs).
EPDs can be used to achieve up to 2 points in the LEED v4 rating system under Materials and Resources Credit: Building Product Disclosure and Optimizations - Environmental Product Declarations.
The steel industry has developed EPDs and can be downloaded here
Updates:
CISC EPD Guidance (2022) - Update on Cold-Formed Steel EPD Development for CSSBI Members
Directives en matière de déclarations environnementales de produit de l’ICTAB (2022) - Mise à jour sur l’élaboration des DEP relatives à l’acier formé à froid pour les membres de l’ICTAB