Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) matter because they provide independently verified, transparent, and comparable data on a product’s environmental impact, allowing the construction industry to reduce embodied carbon, meet certification requirements, and make genuinely sustainable material choices.
An Environmental Product Declaration is a standardised, third‑party‑verified document that reports a product’s environmental impacts across its life cycle — from raw material extraction to end‑of‑life. This includes carbon emissions, energy use, water consumption, resource depletion, and waste flows. EPDs follow international standards such as EN 15804 and ISO 14025, ensuring consistency and comparability across products.
EPDs act as a “sustainability passport” for construction materials, giving designers, contractors, and clients reliable data rather than marketing claims.
Why EPDs Matter for Sustainability in Construction
1. Enable accurate embodied carbon calculations
You cannot reduce what you cannot measure. EPDs provide the verified data needed to calculate a project’s embodied carbon, which is increasingly scrutinised in infrastructure and building projects.
2. They make environmental impact measurable
Without EPDs, sustainability claims are unreliable. EPDs provide quantifiable data, such as Global Warming Potential (carbon footprint).
This is critical in reducing emissions related to construction, which are a major contributor to Greenhouse Gas Emissions globally.
3. They enable low-carbon design decisions
Architects, engineers, and contractors can use EPD data to choose lower-impact materials, like selecting concrete mixes with reduced cement content or steel with recycled content.
This enables reduction in embodied carbon, a key challenge in construction.
4. Support better material selection
EPDs allow like‑for‑like comparisons between products, helping teams choose lower‑impact alternatives in high‑carbon categories such as concrete, steel, insulation, and MEP systems.
5. They are essential for green building certifications
Schemes such as BREEAM, LEED, and DGNB reward or require the use of products with verified environmental data. EPDs are now a core part of meeting these standards.
Projects earn credits for using products with verified environmental data, making EPDs valuable for developers aiming to meet sustainability targets.
6. Reduce greenwashing risk
As sustainability claims face increasing scrutiny, EPDs provide credible, comparable, and transparent data that can withstand external review a major advantage for procurement teams and clients.
7. Support regulatory and market demands
Governments and major developers are tightening requirements around embodied carbon. Public sector tenders increasingly expect EPDs, and manufacturers use them to access new markets and demonstrate responsible practice.
8. Drive continuous improvement
By revealing environmental hotspots in manufacturing, EPDs help producers identify opportunities to reduce emissions, improve efficiency, and gain competitive advantage.
Why EPDs Are Becoming Non‑Negotiable
Across the UK and Europe, the shift from voluntary to mandatory environmental transparency is accelerating. EPDs provide the robust, standardised foundation needed for:
- Whole‑life carbon assessments
- Low‑carbon procurement strategies
- Net‑zero roadmaps
- Transparent reporting and compliance
EPDs matter because they:
- Provide verified environmental data
- Enable accurate carbon accounting
- Support sustainable material choices
- Reduce greenwashing
- Meet certification and regulatory requirements
- Drive industry‑wide decarbonisation
How does Aquvis use EPD’s
One of the key benefits of our solution is that we use EPD’s from manufacturers to match materials in delivery notes and use these to calculate the carbon emissions. In some instances a strong match may not be identified either due to the vague description of the material or that specific product may not have an EPD.
In this scenario we use industry average carbon factors to provide the carbon emissions. Our solution uses the EPD first approach for all material carbon emissions so that you be confident of providing accurate, verifiable emissions data for your sustainability targets and obtain relevant certifications.