EPDItaly: international network of connections serving the marketplace

EPDItaly has built over the years an international network of inter-connections with the most prestigious Program Operators through mutual recognition agreements, with the aim of facilitating the movement of goods and services in international markets.

At the basis of such an agreement between different POs, there are a series of technical analyses about the compatibility of the Regulations and PCRs (Product Category Rules), which allow mutual recognition of the results of conformity assessments in relation to EPDs, without any additional verification. Compliance with PCR specifications allows a signatory to the mutual recognition agreements to adopt its signatory partner’s PCR(s) into its own EPD program and to publish EPDs, validated in its own program, on the partner’s website.

The agreements are part of the common strategy among European and international EOs to disseminate the EPD tool for communicating environmental impacts, creating added value in terms of product spendability and economics by drastically reducing the costs of double verification and publication.

The aim is to increase the harmonization, comparability and acceptance of EPDs on a global scale, building an international showcase in which all suppliers, who choose to enhance the value of their products through a Type III Environmental Label – EPD, can exhibit the potential of their products.

EPDItaly, therefore, offers Italian companies a competitive advantage, enabling publication on numerous EOs. The signing of the agreement with China’s EPD China Program Operator adds to the historic mutual recognition agreements with Germany’s IBU (Institut Bauen und Umwelt), Austria’s BAU EPD, UL (Underwriters Laboratories), a leading safety and environmental science organization in the United States, AENOR, Spain’s operator of the Global EPD program for construction products and Standards Body, and EPD-Norway, Norway’s EPD Program.

Many of the EOs with which EPDItaly has entered into recognition agreements belong to the Eco Platform circuit, an association that brings together the main Program Operators in the construction sector, created with the aim of supporting the harmonization of European Environmental Product Declarations, so that EPDs related to the same product, validated under two different EOs, can be comparable with each other.