This article originally appeared in:

Roofing, May 2015

Link to original article here.

The sustainability movement has impacted the building industry in many ways. Today’s architects, owners and occupants have much greater expectations for the environmental performance of the buildings they design, operate and dwell in. Part of this expectation is focused on the components that make up the building. For example, did the wood come from responsibly harvested forests? Is the metal made of recycled material? Do the paint and interior finishes contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs)?

An EPD is developed by applying a Product Category Rule. PCRs are developed, maintained and warehoused by program operators. Examples of program operators include ASTM, CSA, ICC-ES, Environdec and UL Environment. Program operators also verify that an EPD and its associated life-cycle assessment conform with ISO 14025 and the ISO 14040 series. PCR development is commonly a collaborative effort between industry associations, manufacturers, and/or others. IMAGE: Quantis US

Information technology has encouraged and facilitated this increased demand for in-depth data about building components and systems. People have become accustomed to being able to gather exhaustive information about the products they buy through extensive labeling or online research.

In response to the growing demand for environmental product information, building component manufacturers have begun rolling out environmental product declarations, or EPDs.

It’s a term now commonly heard, but what are they? EPDs are often spoken in the same breath as things like LCA (life-cycle assessment), PCRs (product category rules) and many other TLAs (three-letter acronyms). The fact is they are all related and are part of an ongoing effort to provide as much transparency as possible about what goes into the products that go in and on a building.

“An EPD is a specific document that informs the reader about the environmental performance of a product,” explains Sarah Mandlebaum, life-cycle analyst with Quantis US, the Boston-based branch of the global sustainability consulting firm Quantis. “It balances the need for credible and thorough information with the need to make such information reasonably understandable. The information provided in the document is based on a life-cycle assessment, or LCA, of the product, which documents the environmental impacts of that product from ‘cradle to grave.’ This includes impacts from material production, manufacturing, transportation, use and disposal of the product. An EPD is simply a standardized way of communicating the outcomes of such an assessment.”

The concept of product LCAs has been around for some time and has often been looked at as a way of determining the sustainability of a particular product by establishing the full scope of its environmental footprint. The basic idea is to closely catalog everything that goes into a product throughout its entire life. That means the energy, raw materials, and emissions associated with sourcing its materials, manufacturing it, transporting it, installing it and, ultimately, removing and disposing of it. In the end, an LCA results in a dizzying amount of data that can be difficult to translate or put in any context. EPDs are one way to help provide context and help put LCA data to use.

“The summary of environmental impact data in the form of an EPD can be analogous to a nutrition label on food,” says Scott Kriner, LEED AP, technical director of the Metal Construction Association (MCA), Chicago. “There is plenty of information on the label, but the information itself is meaningless unless one is focused on one area. An LCA determines the water, energy and waste involved in the extraction of raw materials, the manufacturing process, the transportation to a job site and the reclamation of waste at the end of the useful life of a product. With that data in hand, the various environmental impact categories can be determined and an EPD can be developed to summarize the environmental impact information.”

Getting to an EPD is a regimented process, with checks and third-party verifications along the way. There has to be consistency in process and definitions to create a standard vocabulary for all products that pursue an EPD. That is where PCRs, or product category rules, come into play. A PCR defines the rules and requirements for EPDs in a certain product category.

“An LCA of a product must be conducted according to the previously published PCR for the type of product being assessed. If a PCR doesn’t already exist, those rules must first be developed by an editing committee with stakeholder participation and external review,” Mandlebaum says. “Once the LCA has been conducted, it may require a peer review. After peer review, the EPD is developed by formatting the LCA results to fit EPD requirements. This step requires verification by a program operator, which is a separate entity who can write and house PCRs, as well as verify an EPD and its associated LCA conform to the necessary standards. Once verified by the program operator, an EPD can be published and communicated.”

When established, EPDs can be helpful to owners and designers making choices about their buildings. “When an architect or design team reads an EPD for a product, they will find information that is most important to them,” Kriner says. “Comparison among other products’ EPDs can guide a design team to evaluate the most desirable product based on a particular environmental impact category. For LEEDv4 registered projects, there are points available in credits within the Materials and Resources category for products used in the building that have industry-wide EPDs or product-specific EPDs.”

“If a company provides an EPD for its product, that means the company has committed to measuring, and hopefully reducing, the environmental impact of its product over its full life cycle and is disclosing that information in an accurate and credible way,” Mandlebaum says. “While there may be some value in comparing the outcomes of different products on the basis of EPDs, this should be approached with some care. Even though EPDs are based on standards, there is still some potential for variability that is due to how the assessment for each product is conducted, rather than due to the actual differences in the products and their production.”

Though an EPD can never be perfect enough to completely summarize a product, the effort to disclose as much information and empower those making the decisions with as much information as possible has been very positive. “Transparency in building products is becoming more important to the design community,” Kriner says. “That can mean transparency in the environmental impact of materials used, as well as the types of chemical ingredients in various building materials for the health and wellness of occupants. This trend is expected to increase in importance, making EPDs even more prevalent.”

“EPDs do appear to be becoming more prevalent in a variety of industries. This is usually driven by demand from customers for these documents, complemented by a desire to build a competitive advantage,” Mandlebaum says. “In the case of building products, there are rating systems like LEED [from the U.S. Green Building Council, Washington, D.C.] that are driving demand for EPDs by favoring products that have these declarations available. In some parts of the world, governments are driving the demand for EPDs. For example, in the European Union, there is an experimental program in place that would facilitate the voluntary reporting of EPDs across a wide range of industries.”

The roofing industry in the U.S. has generated a number of LCAs, PCRs and EPDs (see “EPDs Up On the Roof”, page ), and the trend seems to indicate more will be coming. With more EPDs available, it is important to understand how the information should be applied.

“Unfortunately, EPDs rarely allow end users to compare the environmental performance of different products, though it is possible,” Mandlebaum says. “Also, EPDs put the focus on individual building products and materials rather than on the final product, which is a whole building. It is important for end users to consider the context in which the building products will be used and also consider how these products will affect the environmental performance of the whole building.”

Still, knowledge is power and EPDs do deliver that. “EPDs provide the design and construction community with a framework for communicating with each other in an accurate and consistent manner about the environmental performance of various building products,” Mandlebaum continues. “It helps prevent greenwashing and encourages manufacturers to use life-cycle thinking and hopefully reduce the environmental impact of their products.”

EPDs Up on the Roof

The roofing product industry has gotten in on the act with life-cycle assessments (LCAs), product category rules (PCRs) and environmental product declarations (EPDs). Following are a few examples of EPDs and PCRs that have been compiled and published by different segments of the roofing industry:

The Metal Construction Association, Chicago, has developed EPDs for insulated metal panels, metal composite materials, and rollformed steel roofing and wall systems. These are based on a gate-to-gate and cradle-to-gate industry-wide LCA assessment on the products and their manufacturing processes from 2011.

The Vinyl Roofing Division of the Chemical Fabrics and Film Association, Cleveland, completed an EPD detailing the vinyl roofing industry’s environmental footprint based on an LCA verified by ASTM International. The vinyl roofing EPD covers 40-, 48- and 60-mil finished thicknesses of white, single-ply reinforced roofing membranes by member manufacturers. .

The Polyisocyanurate Insulation Manufacturers Association, Washington, D.C., recently announced a third-party-verified ISO-compliant EPD for polyiso roof and wall insulations manufactured by PIMA members across North America. The EPD documents that the energy-savings potential of polyiso insulation over a typical 60-year building life span is equal to up to 47 times the initial energy needed to produce, transport, install, maintain and remove the material.

The Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association, Washington, partnered with ASTM International to develop a PCR for asphalt roofing in North America. It will provide consistent methodologies for asphalt roofing manufacturers to measure and report the expected environmental impact of their products.