EPDs - short for Environmental Product Declarations - are transparent reports that communicate a product's environmental impact throughout its lifecycle.

Think of them as nutrition labels for manufactured products and materials – they provide standardized, verifiable information about a product's environmental footprint.

Why are EPDs important?

They're game-changers in the built environment, enabling:

1. Architects, developers, and contractors to choose the most sustainable materials; 

2. Manufacturers to optimize and showcase their products' environmental performance; and

3. Projects to earn credits in green building certifications like LEED and BREEAM.

As regulations tighten and market demand grows, EPDs are becoming indispensable. They offer a competitive edge, help meet legal requirements, and facilitate easier certification processes.

What is in an EPD?

EPDs are based on Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and typically cover impacts from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal. EPDs can take many forms, but we typically see three different types:

• Cradle-to-Gate: Focuses on manufacturing processes

• Cradle-to-Grave: Encompasses the entire product lifecycle

• Cradle-to-Gate with additional end-of-life steps: A hybrid approach

How can you create an EPD?

Creating an EPD involves detailed data collection, preparing and conducting an LCA, and achieving third-party verification, all prior to the actual publication. This rigorous process, typically made up of the steps below, ensures reliability and comparability across products and manufacturers.

1. Data Collection - Identifying and extracting detailed information about every component and material in the supply chain across many different sources.

2. Life Cycle Assessment - Pulling all of this data together to determine the true environmental impact of the product or material.

3. Third-Party Verification - Ensuring your LCA has adhered to standardized protocols, especially surrounding data collection.

4. Publication, and More - Unlocking environmental transparency, and turning that into an asset.

EPDs are your competitive edge in a crowded marketplace.

EPDs are your passport to transparency as a manufacturer.

Traditionally, data collection and LCA completion have been time-consuming and expensive, often deterring companies from creating EPDs. 

But with Pathways' end-to-end EPD solution, that changes.

Our platform is designed to make LCAs and EPDs as easy as possible for material manufacturers, regardless of your experience with or expertise in EPDs, including:

• Automated collection and processing of messy, unstructured data;

• Managed third-party verification of the LCAs and EPDs; and

• Intuitive sales materials, based on your EPDs, that are for made for your end customers.

With Pathways, EPDs are easy, so you can fast-track your journey to transparency in manufacturing.