An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is an essential tool helping to better inform specification decision-makers when it comes to key product selections, explains Stuart Nicholson, Director of Roof Systems at Marley.

The built environment directly contributes 25% of the UK’s carbon emissions. As a result, it is important the construction industry continually strives to decarbonise homes and buildings to support ambitions for a net zero future.

And EPDs are now enabling specifiers to make informed product choices, which can actively help with this.

An EPD is designed to assess a product’s environmental impact across its life cycle – from cradle to grave. Full lifecycle assessments (LCAs) are structured around five key modules, from initial product production, through construction and assembly, to the usage and end of life stages, as well as the product’s potential for re-use, recovery and recycling. The EPD calculation will also include an assessment of how the product is deconstructed, transported and disposed of.

EPDs are independently verified and issued under the rigorous standards of ISO 14025 and EN 15804. Measuring the environmental impact across nine crucial areas, from manufacturing and transportation to assembly, use, removal and recycling.

As specifiers increasingly seek sustainable product solutions to meet low carbon construction challenges, the ability to consider products based on whole life cycle environmental credentials, which have been verified, offers real value. And on a practical basis, EPDs also provide evidence for credits in important rating schemes, such as BREEAM and LEED.

In essence, EPDs empower decision-makers, furnishing them with the critical data they need to make sustainable choices through a process based on fair and transparent environmental comparisons between products across different suppliers.

As a responsible business, Marley fully recognises the central importance of an EPD and the need for tangible and fact-based assurance to the specification community. Important construction product choices will be central to establishing a low carbon future for the built environment.

Demonstrating its commitment to this, Marley is the first British roof system manufacturer to offer EPDs across its clay and concrete tile ranges, in addition to its existing solar PV EPD.

With the pressure to build more sustainably, an ever-increasing challenge for the construction sector, offering verified environmental impact information, such as EPDs, across key product lines will underpin the industry and support its net zero objectives.