- What is an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)?
An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a standardized document that transparently communicates the environmental impacts of a product throughout its life cycle. The information presented in an EPD is based on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and provides verified environmental data that can be used for sustainability assessments, procurement, and environmental reporting.
An EPD summarizes the results of an LCA in a standardized format. In some cases, an EPD may cover only specific stages of a product's life cycle, depending on its scope. The purpose of an EPD is to provide objective, transparent, and comparable information about a product's environmental performance.
An EPD is generally valid for five years and shall be independently verified by a qualified third party. Independent verification ensures that the information is accurate, credible, and prepared in accordance with the applicable standards and programme requirements.
An EPD is an important source of product-specific environmental information and supports organizations in making informed decisions based on transparent and verified data.
Reliable metadata describing data quality, representativeness, and methodological choices further strengthens the transparency and credibility of an EPD and enables users to make meaningful comparisons where appropriate.