Ecological Assessment Based on Environmental Product Declarations

For some years now, environmental product declarations (EPDs) have been available to the public mainly for b2b communication. These contain important environmental impact categories (EIC) and are based on an externally audited life cycle analysis (LCA) according to current ISO standards. The information from EPDs can be used for company-internal product benchmarks and ecological optimizations. The method described in this paper follows the German Federal Environment Agency’s ecological priority method and investigates ecological scarcity, distance-to-target and specific contribution. The article explains the ecological single-score method based on EPD data and validates it against common single score assessments (ReCiPe and UBP). Therefore, 9 case studies have been examined by comparing the full LCA with the results of the new method based on EPD data. As a result, 8 out of 9 studies have similar results with the same benchmark rating. With this information important action alternatives for the future can be derived and ecological product optimization can be pursued.