EPDItaly is growing, and fast too!

The year 2023 confirmed the trend already started in the past years by confirming the strong growth in the number of EPDs published on the Italian Program Operator EPDItaly.

There are many reasons that stimulate more and more companies to want to measure and communicate in an objective and verified way the environmental impacts of their products/services and in particular, in the construction world the main drivers are the following:

• Construction sustainability protocols that give access to higher scores if products with the Environmental Product Declaration are used. Examples of these protocols include Envision for Infrastructure and LEED for Buildings.
• Another element of demand is the gradually increasing national application of Green Public Procurement through the implementation of ministerial decrees CAM (Minimum Environmental Criteria) that refer to EPD as a way of verification regarding certain aspects of sustainability, first and foremost the content in products of recycled, recovered, by-product materials.
• Another important thrust is provided by forward-looking procurement policies of some major players that reward and value products with EPDs.

More generally, in addition to the aforementioned aspects, we believe that the main driver of growth of Type III environmental labels (EPDs) is precisely the fact that there is now a growing awareness that EPDs are an excellent, internationally recognized tool for effective communication, based on scientific methodologies, about the impacts that products and services have on the Planet throughout their life cycle (LCA).

Analyzing in detail the EPDs published as of Oct. 20, 2023, we can say that the 420 active EPDs cover as many as 72 different types of products/services and are divided as follows:

• 247 EPDs (59%) comply with EN 15804 i.e., the standard that provides framework rules per product category (PCR) for the development of Environmental Product and Service Declarations for construction.
• 146 (35%) comply with EN 50693: product category rules for life cycle analysis of electrical and electronic products and systems;
• while the remaining 27 (6%) fall under other product/service types.

391 EPDs (93%) were published as a result of direct verification by accredited Certification Body for EPDItaly while 29 were able to enjoy publication thanks to bilateral mutual recognition agreements signed between EPDItaly and Program Operators from other countries.

The most numerous product type is insulation products (No. 41 EPDs), followed by transformers (No. 37 EPDs) , switches (No. 25 EPDs), concretes (No. 20 EPDs), cables and wires (No. 18 EPDs), thermal insulation products (No. 18 EPDs), cements (No. 15 EPDs), photovoltaic modules (No. 14 EPDs), steel products (No. 14 EPDs), electrical panels (No. 14 EPDs), ceramic tiles (No. 12 EPDs), pipes (No. 12 EPDs), etc.

Thanks to the various international agreements signed in recent years, frontline participation on the Board of the European ECOPLATFORM Association, and the availability of a vast number of PCRs (Product Category Rule), especially in strategic emerging sectors, EPDItaly publishes EPDs of products from as many as 20 countries worldwide, including:

– Italy 310 EPDs (74%)
– China 42 EPDs (10%)
– Brazil 13 (3%)
– Spain 12 (3%)
– Romania 9 (2%)
– Other countries 34 (8%)