The International EPD® System has, as a main objective, the ambition to enable and support organisations in any country to communicate quantified environmental information on the life cycle of their products in a credible, comparable, and understandable way. This is done by:

• offering a voluntary programme for verified Type III environmental declarations according to ISO 14025, ISO 14040/14044, and other relevant standards or methodology guides
• contributing to make standardised, verified, and life cycle-based environmental information a useful tool in different applications, e.g. by facilitating different applications and increasing digitalisation, and
• seeking cooperation and harmonisation with other environmental declarations programmes and initiatives (national, regional, sectorial, etc.) to help organisations broaden the use of EPD on an international market 

The scope of the programme includes any type of product from any organisation in any country where there is a market demand to communicate its life cycle-based environmental information. The resulting EPDs are open to a number of applications and target audiences, including but not limited to business-to-business and business-toconsumer communication. It is the responsibility of the company making any claims to ensure that they are compliant with national laws or regulations in the relevant geographical area.

The scope of an EPD in the programme may be both for the product of a single company or as the average product of companies in a specific sector and geographical area: a “sector EPD”. Similar products from the same company may be included in the same EPD if certain requirements are met. “Single-issue EPDs”, such as climate declarations, may be published in parallel to an EPD as a complementary communication format.

EPDs are based on Product Category Rules providing rules, requirements, and guidelines for a defined product category. As an option, a “pre-certified EPD” may be published during PCR development.