Perspectives on greener product development and manufacturing from Sustainable Minds, our partners, customers and contributors.

Transparency is the New Green in product selection, specification & procurement: New EPDs & PCRs for the Digital Economy – Making EPDs better for procurement – coming soon!

By Sustainable Minds on October 15, 2021

Recorded Wed, Oct 6, 2–3pm ET

With the increasing demand for EPD (environmental product declaration) data to make procurement decisions, the need to create EPDs that are standardized, consistent and reliable is paramount. Making that happen requires profound process and technology change by all participants involved in their creation – program operators, LCA analysts, manufacturers and technology solution providers.

Building Transparency has been working to make it possible to use EPDs to specify & procure lower embodied carbon materials. First with the EC3 tool and now introducing openEPD, an open data format for easily passing digital 3rd-party verified EPDs among program operators, EPD databases, LCA & design tools, reporting & procurement.

Non-standardized PCRs (product category rules) lead to non-standardized EPDs.1 Concurrently, work has been underway at the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA) to publish an updated version of its PCR Guidance Development to ensure the creation of better PCRs that lead to better EPDs.

Join us for demos and to learn about:

  • Using the EC3 tool & Transparency Catalog to make lower embodied carbon decisions
  • EC3 under the hood – how program operators and MFRs can create and maintain digital EPDs using openEPD
  • The new ACLCA PCR Development Guidance and where openEPD fits in
  • The ecosystem of people, partners and process advancing the change
Stacy Smedley, Building Transparency, Skanska Terry Swack, Sustainable Minds
Stacy Smedley
Exec Dir. Building Transparency
Dir. Sustainability, Skanska USA
Terry Swack
Founder/CEO, Sustainable Minds

About the EC3 tool / Sustainable Minds partnership: We are committed to simplifying product transparency reporting, make EPD data more understandable and meaningful and deliver easy to use and powerful tools.

EC3 gypsum table

EC3 tool results in the Transparency Catalog: Look for the green showing the quintiles in which the product's embodied carbon compares to the catagory range. Click the CO2 | EC3 link to go directly to the EPD page to run comparisons and add products to your project.

Continually updated and curated by Sustainable Minds' data team to include every building product MFR in N. America creating EPDs from every program operator in N. America. The Transparency Catalog is revolutionizing green building product selection and specification by radically simplifying the delivery of transparency information.

AECOs: Schedule a demo!
MFRs: Contact us about adding your products.

Transparency Catalog

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