EPDs: Environmental Product Declarations

An EPD - Environmental Product Declaration - details the environmental effects of building products based on a life cycle assessment (LCA). It is created by the manufacturer and then reviewed by the Institut Bauen und Umwelt e. V. (IBU) on the basis of ISO 14025 and EN 15804. EPDs are Type III declarations as per the International Organization for Standardization.

EPDs are widely used in the construction sector, mainly to perform LCAs of buildings or to compare different functionally equivalent products (according to EN 15804).

EPDs are crucial for sustainable building certifications like LEED, BREEAM, DGNB, BNB, or HQE, and are now being introduced into national regulations for construction (e.g. in France). For manufacturers, EPDs also highlight the optimisation potential over the lifetime of the product in order to optimise resources and decrease impacts, resulting in a low-impact built environment and life cycle cost-effectiveness.

IBU is currently the only organisation in Germany that consistently certifies based on international standards. The IBU label provides information, credibility, and acceptance.

ArcelorMittal Europe is a member of IBU and has launched an ambitious programme to publish EPDs and provide construction product data in order to demonstrate our commitment to sustainable building deployment all over the world.

Our EPDs are independently verified by IBU and, through IBU, global recognition is ensured by their ECO Platform, an organisation of national EPD programme holders in Europe that promotes the cross-border recognition and application of EPDs.