UK cement industry publishes Environmental Product Declaration

The UK cement industry has published its first Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), which declares the UK cement industry’s life cycle environmental impact and covers 100% of domestically produced cement. It builds on 10 years of sustainability information published in annual sustainability performance reports.

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a standardised way of quantifying the embodied environmental impacts of a product or system over its lifetime. The information declared includes data on the environmental impacts of raw materials acquisition, energy use and efficiency, content of materials and chemical substances, emissions to air, soil and water and waste generation.

Dr Pal Chana, Executive Director MPA Cement, called this a ‘great milestone’ for the UK cement industry. “Our new EPD demonstrates that we are meeting UK stakeholder and supply chain expectations by providing a detailed level of environmental footprint information,” he said.

“However, whilst this EPD is a significant step in environmental transparency, it is important that the information is used correctly: we need to compare the role of building functional units in the performance over the whole life of the building, and not make comparisons at the individual construction component level,” he added.

Institut Bauen und Umwelt – the Institute for Construction and Environment, Europe’s leading EPD programme operator, has independently verified and approved the UK Average Portland Cement EPD.

The publication of the UK average cement EPD is paving the way for production of EPDs for concrete products. The product category rules, which provide the calculation method for an EPD, are being finalised for concrete products. With these rules and this new cement EPD, the concrete industry will also be able to provide designers, contractors and clients with concrete EPD information to use in their project environmental assessment.

The UK Average Portland Cement EPD can be downloaded here.

Adapted from press release by Katherine Guenioui

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/europe-cis/05032014/first_environmental_product_declaration_for_uk_cement_industry_846/