Meeting the increased demands for information on the market
There is an increasing market demand for quantified environmental information. The business sector as well as other parts of society have a need for an international recognised systems approach, which enables communication of relevant and credible information about environmental performance of products. EPDs are being developed with the overall purpose to meet these demands and to serve these needs.
EPDs are based on principles inherent in the ISO standard for Type III environmental declarations (ISO 14025) giving them a wide-spread international acceptance.
A dynamic communication tool concurrent with product development
EPDs meet the requests from many companies and organisations to communicate continuous improvements of environmental performance of their products and services to the market, and this concurrently with communicating their own product development work. Since the content of an EPD can be modified and updated at any time to reflect improvements in product performance, EPDs can be considered a dynamic and "living" communication tool. Today, there exist no other generally-accepted environmental communication tools on the market, which can offer these possibilities in the same way.
One declaration for all national and international markets
EPDs are usually based on a common report format and do not include value-based judgements. This allows end users of the information to interpret and evaluate the information according to their own perspectives and preferences independent on national, geographic or technical prerequisites. As a consequence if this only one declaration is needed to reach a broad and diversified global target group. The international EPD®system is Internet-based and easy-accessible. By making it possible for any organisation to communicate information about environmental performance of products in an instant way, the international EPD®system could be considered to be both time- and cost-efficient to convey a message to any interested party.