Product declarations (EPD)

Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) are supposed to encourage the demand for, and supply of, more eco-friendly products through verificable and non-misleading information. EPDs are given great importance in the European Union "Integrated Product Policy" (IPP). It is envisaged that this policy rely on "eco-labelling standards" developed within the ISO 14000 standards series (see also the Environmental Management Systems section).

An ISO Technical Report (ISO/TR14025) on "Environmental labels and declarations – Type III environmental declarations – Principles and procedures" was published in 2000. It was upgraded to become an ISO standard in 2002. The Working Group ISO/TC 207/SC 3/WG 4 on "Environmental Declarations" started to develop a matrix for the revised standard and the revision process was completed in 2006.

ECOS has worked to ensure that ISO 14025:2006 lived up to expectations. Some progress has been made following interventions from ECOS and ANEC (consumers federation), for instance by introducing requirements for additional environmental information for Business to Consumer declarations or through the obligation to involve consumer and environmental interest representatives in the development of EPDs. However, such schemes remain of concern to ECOS. The environmental relevance of the presented data in EPDs remains unclear and no benchmarks or scales are provided to facilitate the recognition of products with good or excellent performance. Therefore the comprehensibility and usefullness of EPDs is not satisfactory enough.