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Products used in the built environment should meet specific criteria for the health and safety of all occupants. These are called Health Product Declarations (HPDs) and are the standardized way of reporting the contents of your building products. It’s a valuable tool for not only encouraging transparency, it creates a sense of brand trust and is safer for anyone using the property – EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
For Environmental Product Declaration in GCC (EPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/environmental-product-declarations-epd-leed-product-certification/
For Health Product Declaration in GCC (HPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/health-product-declarations-hpd-leed-product-certifications/
For our other solutions we offer in Middle-East, please click https://www.envirolink.me/sa/solutions/
As the social concern for sustainability, wellness, and health continue to grow, developers have shown an increasing interest for visibility in their products and processes for manufacturing. Health Product Declarations are developed by the instructions set forth by the Health Product Declaration Collaborative and is considered to be complementary to life cycle documentation, like Environmental Product Declarations.
The HPD Open Standard describes the format and directions for reporting your product contents and the related health data. This process is meant as a form of disclosure and does not necessarily mean a product is “healthy.” Rather, it infers it has passed a specific set of standards laid out by the HPD specifications.
The latest LEED building certifications were updated to v4 in 2013 by the US Green Building Council as a result of the public’s desire for full disclosure of ingredients in building materials. In order to contribute to the Building Product Disclosure for Material Ingredients and Optimization (Material Ingredients) credit of LEED v4, companies need to disclose the ingredients in their products down to 1,000 parts per million. Gathering Health Product Declarations for at least 20 products is one way of earning a LEED point.
HPDs are new to LEED v4 but are one of the ways of documenting ingredients. It’s a flexible tool for meeting the standards and gaining the credits you seek. HPDs published under version 2.1 (and later) offer a means to prescreen for LEED requirements. Health Product Declarations that pass a pre-check can be found in the HPD Public Repository for your convenience. Just use the search bar.EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
For Environmental Product Declaration in GCC (EPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/environmental-product-declarations-epd-leed-product-certification/
For Health Product Declaration in GCC (HPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/health-product-declarations-hpd-leed-product-certifications/
For our other solutions we offer in Middle-East, please click https://www.envirolink.me/sa/solutions/
Since HPDs are used to indicate the health impact of building products, the HPD Open Standard specification works in conjunction with a variety of sustainability programs. This makes sense since they are exposing potential hazards that can affect everything in the surrounding environment. The list includes a growing number of rating and certification standards in the industry, which includes:
There are many more to list, but this is a good start when investigating how an HPD Open Standard works with green organizations for easier certification. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
For many manufacturers, reporting on material health is new territory and obtaining the data needed can be challenging. Professionals working on LEED v4 projects and product manufacturers need to be able to easily navigate “materials disclosure and transparency.” Product manufacturers are responsible for developing the initial HPD and can use the HBD repository to help them select materials that meet LEED requirements.
The HPD Collaborative offers an informative manual specifically for manufacturers seeking to create an HPD. They help companies incorporate health considerations into manufacturing, assembly, and product design. The HPD Open Standard provides the detailed requirements a manufacturer needs to meet in order to qualify for credits.
Empowering your design in the modern age is all about making healthier material choices. The building industry’s leading standard, the HPD Open Standard, is still in the early stages of development and there can be a learning curve when applying it properly.
Luckily, there are certain steps you can take that have proven a success based on experience from real projects. Building designers and developers should pay attention to the following issues during each phase of the venture. These steps will encourage the use of HPDs and ingredient disclosure while meeting the requirements of LEED v4. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
For Environmental Product Declaration in GCC (EPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/environmental-product-declarations-epd-leed-product-certification/
For Health Product Declaration in GCC (HPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/health-product-declarations-hpd-leed-product-certifications/
For our other solutions we offer in Middle-East, please click https://www.envirolink.me/sa/solutions/
If you want your people wholly committed to the project, you must give them context. Take the time to explain the concept of transparency and why it plays an important role in green building. They should know that health concerns over chemicals in building materials are a major interest for buyers and investors.
Pertinent members of the team must understand the drive behind disclosure and work toward a common goal. They should fully understand what HPDs are and how the HBD Open Standard is applied to modern green developments. This can be best achieved by assigning one team member responsibility for maintaining transparency on a consistent basis. Allow them to be the voice for this process.
For LEED v4 projects, familiarize yourself and your team with the LEED Material Ingredients credit as it relates to Health Product Declarations. Make sure you understand exactly what compliance infers and what is expected to meet the standard. Your team must have a full comprehension of what is expected to meet these requirements—including design implications and timeframe. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
Prior to bidding, discussions about HBDs should be had with any party involved, including:
Make it clear that meeting LEED v4 credit requirements is a key feature on the project. If they need more information, strongly urge them to seek training prior to the start of the project. Training is available through the U.S. Green Building Council’s Education@USGBC platform. You can also instruct the team on specific LEED v4 requirements via the HPDC website.
Since Health Product Declarations are fairly new, there may not be one created for the product you want to use. You can check the HPDC Public Repository to determine if one has been written and meets requirements. The LEED credit has specific standards that not all HPDs may meet so it is always best to check. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
This is the time when you make sure the contractor understands the importance of selecting products with HPDs for LEED certification. You should choose at least 5-10 more products with HPDs than you need to guarantee quantity compliance. They must also meet the LEED quality compliance requirements. You can use the pre-check tool to do a pre-project scan.
Always keep track of the products for which you have obtained a compliant Health Product Declaration. It’s fairly common to eliminate a variety of items from your list that do not meet LEED v4 standards. That’s why you should start with more than you need; as a buffer.
When you have gathered enough HPDs to meet the quality and quantity required, you should proactively monitor all selection activities and product specification. This will ensure those products remain a part of the project for the entire process. This includes the design and bidding phases.
Make sure you clearly define that, for these specific products, substitutions without HPDs will be rejected. It should be a crucial point to everyone that you are actively pursuing the LEED v4 Material Ingredients credit. This will put your agenda at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
This is where you have to be acutely aware of any substitutions. If you are planning for the credit in your overall budget, replacing materials can be disastrous. Always strictly enforce rejections of substitutions on HPD products that meet LEED standards. They are difficult to find as it is, and it will disqualify you from the green acknowledgment.
During construction, keep track of all HPB products that are procured and properly documented on LEED paperwork. If you do not have a LEED consultant on the project, this can be done for internal quality assurance. Documenting the use of these building materials typically falls to the responsibility of the contractor. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
For Environmental Product Declaration in GCC (EPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/environmental-product-declarations-epd-leed-product-certification/
For Health Product Declaration in GCC (HPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/health-product-declarations-hpd-leed-product-certifications/
For our other solutions we offer in Middle-East, please click https://www.envirolink.me/sa/solutions/
The ultimate goal of transparency and full disclosure is to spur further innovation in healthier and safer materials by manufacturers. The market pursues green materials to build with and the public desires to live around them. The LEED pre-check is a great way to save time and money to pre-certify your materials and help you make a more informed decision on behalf of your clients.
Allowing open collaboration of voluntary market participants and programs to enhance the healthfulness of materials improves and optimizes the building environment. The quality of a Health Product Declaration is often judged by the accuracy and completeness of the document. The standards can provide you with the specifications needed to ensure every project you touch is supplied with the greenest materials possible. And that’s a win-win for every party involved. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
— by Linda Barnard
By now you’re likely aware of the big changes to the Materials and Resources (M&R) credits under LEED v4. If not, the following article might come as a surprise. Regardless, hopefully BASF can shed a little light on one area we’ve been working on for the past three years – Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). In simple terms let’s peel back the layers to understand the following:
What is an EPD?
The EPD process
EPD in practice
For Environmental Product Declaration in GCC (EPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/environmental-product-declarations-epd-leed-product-certification/
For Health Product Declaration in GCC (HPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/health-product-declarations-hpd-leed-product-certifications/
For our other solutions we offer in Middle-East, please click https://www.envirolink.me/sa/solutions/
The intent is not to make you an expert but to give you enough information to navigate the credit and know what you’re asking for and what you’re getting in return from suppliers.
What is an EPD?
An EPD reports a comprehensive set of environmental impacts in compliance with the International Standards Organization ISO) 14025 and ISO 21930. Under ISO 14021, 14024 and 14025, there are different environmental labels that exist.
A Type I label is a verified label that meets a set of standards. Examples are Energy Star and the FSC label for lumber.
A Type II label is a self-declaration by an organization on their product or products and might provide information such as the recycled content in the product or in the packaging material.
A verified ISO Type III label contains Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) results which may provide additional product and environmental performance information. (LCA uses guidance from ISO 14040 and 14044.)
To put the output of an EPD into context let’s look at the nutrition label below (Figure 1) that you would find on a box of cereal or bottle of soda for example. These labels provide information relative to health impacts associated with consuming a particular product such as saturated fat or total carbohydrates per serving size. Similarly an EPD provides environmental impact information such as climate change or acidification potential (acid rain) based on a declared unit, in this case one cubic meter of concrete. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
Figure 1 Putting EPD’s in context – nutrition labels compared to EPD’s
The EPD Process
This process can be quite lengthy and involved. It begins with Product Category Rules (PCR) which define the rules and requirements for an EPD in a certain product category. For example, if you wanted 10 batches of similar chocolate chip cookies to compare from 10 different bakers you would need a recipe. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
Simply stated the PCR defines which data is used in a life cycle analysis and how the data is collected and reported. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analyzes the data specified in the PCR. The LCA measures inputs, outputs and environmental impacts of a product across its lifespan from cradle to grave. The Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is the summary document of data collected in the LCA as specified by the PCR. This process is illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2 The EPD Process
EPD in practice
Recognizing that buildings are a large contributor to carbon emissions, mitigating this at a product level with science based environmental data has the potential to make a huge impact. This type of data allows the design community to evaluate trade-offs on both performance and environmental criteria which has become an element of the building profession. This drive for environmental information has happened for a variety of reasons such as USGBCs LEEDv4 which calls for EPD in the revised M&R credits; Architecture 2030 challenge which calls for the reduction of carbon and fossil fuel energy consumption for new and renovated buildings and lastly the proliferation of EPD globally, particularly in furniture and flooring, is putting pressure on more US manufacturers to provide the same level of transparency. EPD HPD Product Declarations in Dubai Abu Dhabi UAE LEED Projects
To highlight how this would work in practice, let’s consider that you’re designing a building that will use a significant amount of concrete. Portland cement, a key ingredient in concrete, is extremely carbon intensive by virtue of how it is produced. Recognizing that your firm and your client are interested in driving down the carbon foot print of the project one place to start is by requiring an EPD from your concrete producer. The results of this process may allow you to compare various mix designs to see which one offers the most carbon savings. Figure 3 shows fly ash and slag as replacements for Portland Cement with Green Sense® being a proprietary mix optimization program from BASF. As you can see carbon emission savings results from optimizing the mix design – replacing Portland Cement with a secondary material lowers the overall carbon footprint. Using practical equivalencies to show gas, energy and water savings helps put environmental impact categories in perspective.
Figure 3 Mix designs and carbon emissions with practical equivalencies.
Moving forward utilize the information here to ask questions of your manufacturers about the information you’re gathering on projects. If EPDs are provided, question the process:
Is there a PCR guided by ISO 14025 and ISO 21930?
Is the LCA guided by ISO 14040 and 14044?
Is the EPD third party verified?
Recognize that a Type III EPD has three main parts 1.) A description of the company and product, 2.) A section for environmental performance and 3.) A section for reviewing bodies and standards.
Conduct your due diligence so you’re getting the best information possible and not unintentionally proliferating greenwashing.
FYI NOTE: In the International Standard (ISO 21930:2017), EPD is an abbreviation used to represent both the single and plural full form designation of “environmental product declaration”, which is intended to be synonymous with the designation “type III environmental declaration”.
For Environmental Product Declaration in GCC (EPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/environmental-product-declarations-epd-leed-product-certification/
For Health Product Declaration in GCC (HPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/health-product-declarations-hpd-leed-product-certifications/
For our other solutions we offer in Middle-East, please click https://www.envirolink.me/sa/solutions/
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Companies of all sizes, industries and geographies are being urged by investors, customers and the NGO community to speed up measures to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions more quickly. Many companies have already implemented strategies for internal emissions reductions, such as energy efficiency. But with pressure mounting, a strategy to decrease GHGs across the whole supply chain becomes essential.
Promoting the circular economy and encouraging green purchasing is a primary way that companies can contribute to boosting the ecological transition. Reducing emissions from purchased goods can take many forms: selecting materials with a lower CO2 content, reducing the quantity of inputs, using recycled materials, reducing and reusing production waste, favoring more sustainable suppliers, engaging key suppliers on improving their own carbon footprints, etc.
The Environmental Product Declaration (EPD®), developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), is an independently verified and registered tool that communicates transparent and comparable information about the life-cycle environmental impact of products to give companies more transparency into their value chain emissions.
Product-related environmental issues are becoming increasingly important to businesses and public administrations. In practice, an EPD is a report containing market-driven and verified facts about the environmental performance of goods and services. An EPD quantifies environmental information about the life-cycle of a product to provide a basis for comparing environmental performance of products. This science-based environmental information can be used for any type of environmental management system and may support other organizational goals in the environmental domain.
To create an EPD, a life-cycle analysis (LCA) study is calculated in accordance with the product category rules (PCR). The results from the study and other information, as required by the PCR, are then compiled into the EPD reporting format. The EPD is then verified by an approved independent party. Registration and publication of the EPD is done on www.environdec.com.
EPDs are primarily intended to facilitate business-to-business transactions, although they may benefit consumers who are environmentally focused when choosing goods or services. Companies across various sectors have implemented EPDs to improve their sustainability goals and to demonstrate a commitment to the environment to their customers.
1. Construction
The construction sector acts as a pioneer in LCA of products. In some cases, the information given in the EPD may also be used in building assessment schemes to demonstrate knowledge of the life cycle environmental impact of incoming construction materials. Many certifications, including BRREAM, LEED and HQE, are partially based on EPDs and were implemented to place greater value on the energy and environmental performance of products through labeling. In Europe, the European Committee for Standardization has published EN 15804, a common PCR for EPD development in the construction sector.
The below example of an EPD demonstrates the emissions that result from various stages in the life cycle of plasterboard:
Source: www.environdec.com
2. Paper Manufacturing
Some paper manufacturers calculate the Carbon Footprint of their paper products based on the ten elements of the Carbon Footprint Framework for Paper and Board Products, developed by the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI). With this simplified LCA analysis, we can compare the EPD for the same paper manufactured by 2 providers:
We see that the difference in total product emissions is huge between the two providers—mainly due to reduced emissions associated with purchase of electricity and steam. Because the second manufacturer procures green energy, it has cut its carbon footprint in half compared to the first manufacturer! Green procurement, from buying renewable energy to choosing more environmentally-friendly inputs, can have a cascading effect on emissions procuded along the production and the value chain.
The fulfilment of EPDs by suppliers as well as its use by customers is a practice that is bound to develop—businesses should keep an eye on this trend and begin assessing whether obtaining an EPD is right for your organization’s products or services.
For Environmental Product Declaration in GCC (EPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/environmental-product-declarations-epd-leed-product-certification/
For Health Product Declaration in GCC (HPD), refer to https://www.envirolink.me/sa/health-product-declarations-hpd-leed-product-certifications/
For our other solutions we offer in Middle-East, please click https://www.envirolink.me/sa/solutions/
Providing environmental, sustainability, food safety and quality certification, auditing and standards development since 2007 in GCC. We support our Clients gathering Credit Claims for LEED V4, LEED V4.1, Emirates Green Building Council (UAE), Estidama Pearl rating System (Abu Dhabi – UAE), Al Sa’fat (Dubai – UAE), Global Sustainability Assessment System (GSAS), BREEAM & other Green Building & Sustainability Standards.
