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Type III Environmental Labelling – Environmental Product Declaration

What is Environmental Product Declaration?

Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a set of measurable pieces of information about a product’s impact on the environment over its entire life cycle (e.g. water and energy consumption, production of harmful waste, impact on climate change, destruction of the ozone layer, etc.) This information is gained using the life cycle analysis (LCA) method in accordance with the ÈSN ISO 14040-49 standards and can be further supplemented with various other pieces of information that is considered significant. The document with these data must be publicly available and the data contained in it must be verifiable.

Environmental Product Declaration’s Objectives

The objective is to increase both the supply of and demand for products and services with a smaller negative environmental impact in comparison to their alternative products by disseminating verified, accurate and not misleading information on the environmental aspects of products and services.

Basic Principles

The basic principles of environmental product declarations within international EPD systems are as follows:

• Objectivity – The EPD system is based on the requirement that internationally recognised and valid methods of life cycle analysis (LCA) must be used. This condition makes it possible to identify the most important environmental aspects and focus on these, while taking into account the overall image with all connections and implications. This results in constant improvement.
• Credibility – The declarations are subject to reviews, an approval process and verification performed by an independent verifier.
• Neutrality – The EPD system does not lay any automatic claim to a greater environmental friendliness of the products assessed and does not prescribe any environmental friendliness criteria that would have to be observed. The product’s environmental profile is formed solely on the basis of the assessment.
• Comparability – This is ensured through the rules of the product categories of the selected products and services. The rules describe the harmonised principles for LCA preparation, namely the collection of data, methodology, calculations and the assessment of obtained results.
• Open to all products and services – The EPD system can be applied to any products and services.
• Open to all interested parties – Most activities of the EPD system are performed through easily accessible information on the Internet.
• Environmental impact-oriented – The EPD system also allows for the inclusion of the assessment of potential environmental impact.

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