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As government purchasers continue asking more sophisticated questions about the environmental impacts of products and services, some suppliers are encouraging purchasers to look beyond environmental certifications such as EcoLogo, Energy Star, Greenguard, Green Seal and UL Environment. Suppliers also are sharing information about their products and services in Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), which look like an environmental nutrition label. An EPD summarizes information about life cycle assessments (LCAs), human health concerns, hazardous substances and recycled content. As more and more suppliers share detailed information, purchasers need to understand how to use it to make greener purchasing decisions.

The basics of EPDs and LCAs

An EPD encompasses a variety of performance data, including environmental, human health, mechanical, safety and other performance capabilities, in a single document to help purchasers make greener purchasing decisions. An EPD is a third-party-verified, internationally recognized set of environmental information based primarily on the results of an LCA.

An LCA seeks to quantify the environmental impacts of a product or service. It attempts to measure the impacts from the product's entire life cycle, including the acquisition of raw materials, transportation, manufacturing, packaging, use of the product and ultimate disposal. It is typically a large report that documents the assumptions and data used to conduct the analysis. LCAs can vary in scope with some covering more life cycle phases than others.

An EPD summarizes an LCA and, in some cases, provides additional environmental information. To ensure EPDs are useful, purchasers are requiring that EPDs meet the ISO 14025 standard. ISO 14025 requires that an EPD be based on publicly available product criteria rules that determine what data should be collected and how it will be measured in a life cycle assessment. All of this information must be independently verified.

EPDs are frequently formatted to resemble the nutrition label found on a box of cereal to highlight the most relevant and meaningful data for a purchaser.

Like the nutrition label on a cereal box, an EPD does not evaluate products. Like a nutrition label, it simply provides additional product information to enable government purchasers and other interested consumers to compare products and to determine for themselves which ones are greener.

Traditional environmental certification and labeling programs such as EcoLogo, Energy Star, Greenguard, Green Seal, UL Environment and others identify environmental leaders. Their seals or marks only appear on products and services that meet an environmental leadership standard. Typically, environmental leadership standards are established so that only the top 20 percent of products can meet the standard.

These traditional environmental labels typically do not allow purchasers to determine which of the products meeting the standard are greener than other products that also meet the standard.

An EPD, however, could appear on every product, not just the environmental leaders. They are also more transparent than traditional environmental labels, allowing purchasers to compare products on multiple dimensions.

But EPDs can be confusing to interpret for purchasers unsure about which environmental indicators are most relevant or meaningful. It can be just as confusing for some consumers to select healthier cereals based on nutrition label information. (Which is more important Vitamin A content or Vitamin B12? Is fat content more important than calorie or sodium content?) As the purchasing and supplier communities become more familiar with LCAs and EPDs, it will be easier to integrate them into routine purchasing procedures.

Some of the environmental labeling programs, including UL Environment, are exploring hybrid labels as a way to combine the easy-to-use traditional certification with the additional transparency EPDs provide. This approach would allow purchasers to require products to be certified to an environmental leadership standard while also collecting additional environmental information, thus making it easier for purchasers to identify greener products quickly. It would also allow more sophisticated purchasers to conduct their own assessment to determine which of the certified products is most appropriate to meet their additional environmental requirements.