On March 5th, the International EPD® System will host an EPD breakfast seminar for local stakeholders in the Øresund Region. The seminar will include:

• An introduction to the EPD concepts and its uses,
• The company perspective with NCC Construction describing their work to produce EPDs of infrastructure,
• A description of the procedure to produce EPDs from the view of an LCA practitioner.

For more information or to register for the event, please contact the Secretariat. The Seminar will be held in Swedish. Participation is free, but the number of participants is limited.

COPROB has published an Environmental Product Declaration for refined sugar in the International EPD® System.

The EPD concerns Italia Zuccheri bulk sugar sold to industry and produced from sugar beet grown in the agricultural areas of Emilia-Romagna and Veneto by the shareholder of COPROB and processed in the sugar factories in Minerbio (Bologna) and Pontelongo (Padova).

The Product Category Rules (PCR) for Electricity, steam and hot/cold water generation and distribution have been updated to version 3.0. Key changes include:

• Renewed validity (2019-02-05)
• Compliance with version 2.01 of the General Programme Instructions
• Requirements for updating of core infrastructure data in relation to a renewed EPD.
• Specification of GWP calculations
• Geographical scope
• Editorial changes

The work to update the PCR was led by Mikael Ekhagen at Vattenfall as PCR Moderator, with input from industry stakeholders. The draft was available for two months open consultation at www.environdec.com, and reviewed by the Technical Committee of the International EPD® System before publication.

The new version is now once again available to develop and register EPDs for this product category.

To fulfill the latest developments in the market for environmental declarations, standardisation and LCA methodology the General Programme Instructions of the International EPD® System are currently being updated to version 2.5.

To ensure credibility and as required by ISO 14025, the General Programme Instructions are subject to open consultation before being applicable.

Stakeholders are invited to provide comments on the draft until 2015-03-23.

A new record number of visitors to www.environdec.com was set in 2014 with more than 117,000 visits. This is a +22% growth since the year before, which is also reflected in the number of unique visitors.

The geographical spread of the visits was great with 25 countries recording more than 1 000 of the visits. The top five countries were the same as the year before: Italy, USA, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

We hope to make the website even more usable and to attract even more visitors in 2015. Any feedback and suggestions on how to improve the webpage is appreciated, and may be sent to info@environdec.com.

The British manufacturer of interior products SAS International Ltd. has chosen to develop and register 15 environmental product declarations in the International EPD® System. The EPDs cover their a range of their modular clip-in steel suspended ceiling systems.

The EPDs are made in compliance with the European standard EN 15804 and declares the environmental performance of the product over difference life cycle stages.

At the end of December, the Secretariat will have a limited availability compared to normal due to public holidays. The period affected is December 24th until January 6th. In order for an EPD to be guaranteed to be published before the end of the year, it should be submited no later than December 21st.

The Secretariat wishes you all a very pleasant winter holiday!

Ideal Seramik Sıhhi Tesisat Malz. San.ve Tic. A.Ş. has become the first company from Turkey to register EPDs in the International EPD® System. Their two EPDs registered in December covers their Fine Fire Clay (FFC) and Vitreous China (VC) ceramic sanitary ware of the IDEVIT brand.

The EPDs were registered via EPD Turkey, the local contacts of the International EPD® System for EPD registrations, helpdesk and marketing of EPDs in Turkey.

The EPDs are registered to use the ECO Platforom logotype, carry ECO EPD reference numbers and be published at http://eco-platform.org.

The four first EPDs from the IBU EPD system to be dually-registered in the International EPD® system have now been published. The two pioneering companies are Dorma and H+H.

The dual registration is made possible through a mutual recognition agreement between the two programme operators, and was preceded an extensive analysis of the similarities and differences between the two programmes. Dual registration is a service offered for EPDs of construction products that are compliant with the EN 15804 standard.

The dual registration means that the logotypes of both programmes and two registration numbers may be carried on the EPD, and that the EPD is published on both www.environdec.com and the IBU website. Having the dual registration offers a market advantage to the EPD owner as the logotypes may have different market recognition.

"We are very happy to see the first dual registration of four EPDs from IBU into the International EPD® System. We expect our collaboration with IBU to be used as a template for similar co-operations across Europe in the future"  - Kristian Jelse, Project Manager at the International EPD® System. 

For more information, please contact Kristian Jelse, Project Manager International EPD® System, kristian@environdec.com, tel. +46 31 708 65 13.

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A new case study has been published, for the Italian company Granarolo. Granarolo is one of the largest food-processing companies in Italy with three main areas: milk & cream, yogurt and dairy products.

The International EPD® System has become an approved programme to use the ECO Platform logotype on EPDs for construction products compliant with the standard EN 15804. To be able to do this, an audit was carried out to ensure that the rules and procedures for verification of the programme were compliant with the EN 15804 and the common quality guidelines by the ECO Platform.

During the audit, a sample EPD from the company Europrofil was also assessed. With the audit completed, the Europrofil EPD for light gauge steel profiles was allowed to use the ECO Platform logotype. This was highlighted during an event in Brussels together with EPDs from other approved programme operators.

The possibility to include the ECO Platform logotype for EN 15804-compliant EPDs for construction products is now available to all companies in the International EPD® System, given that certain requirements are met. The use of the logotype is subject to a fee of €100 per EPD and year. This fee is payed to ECO Platform via the International EPD® System and invoived together with the annual fee. For more information about this option, please contact the Secretariat.

Product Category Rules (PCR) for declaring the environmental impact of Professional footwear have now been published in the International EPD® System.

The development of the PCR was led by Carlo Brondi at the Synesis Consortium as the appointed PCR Moderator in accordance with the PCR Process described in the General Programme Instructions of the International EPD® System, which are based on ISO 14025. During the development of the document, it has been subject for an open consultation on www.environdec.com as well as a review by the appointed Technical Committee.

The PCR is now available for any company to voluntarily develop and publish information on the life cycle environment impact of sparkling wine in a transparent and comparable way.

Note: This PCR was initially launched as "Work footwear". The name was updated to better match the terminology in the industry.

Politecnico di Milano and Reno De Medici present their experiences of EPD Process Certification at the Ecobalance 2014 conference in Tsukuba, Japan. In the presentation given on October 29^th by Lucia Rigamonti, they conclude that:

[The EPD Process] will give the organisation the possibility to simplify the achievement of EPDs certification for many products, saving time and money. [...]  well managed internal EPD routines will make data collection and its conversion into EPDs more straightforward and less expensive, allowing the organisation to operate it in a resource- and time efficient manner.

Ecobalance 2014 was organised by the Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan and was the eleventh edition of the conference series, held biannually since 1994.

The PCR for Construction products and construction services will expire in January 2015 and is therefore being updated. This PCR is important as it is the most common ways for companies to develop and register EN 15804-compliant PCRs in the International EPD® System.

This PCR is applicable as a PCR to all construction products, with the limitations that:

• A cradle-to-gate or cradle-to-gate with options system boundary is used
• A declared unit is used (instead of a functional unit)

Any stakeholder is invited to comment on the draft before 2015-01-13. The document will thereafter undergo review and is expected to be published soon afterwards to ensure that there is a very limited time period where no valid PCR is available.