TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENTAL PRODUCT DECLARATIONS UNDERSTANDING THE DECISIONS BEHIND THE DATA BY MONICA SCHULTES Monica Schultes recently spoke with Emily Lorenz, PE, an expert in sustainable building construction practices and primary author of a new PCI white paper “Suitability of Environmental Product Dec-larations (EPD) in Material Selection.” Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity. Monica Schultes: Why write this white paper on EPDs? Emily Lorenz: While EPDs have been around for a while—the ISO standard was published in 2006—there is an urgent need to get this information into the hands of owners and designers. Efforts like “Buy Clean” [a U.S. government policy to promote construc-tion materials and products with lower embodied greenhouse gas emissions] are admirable and encourage the AEC [architec-ture, engineering, and construction] community to responsibly select resilient materials. However, they sometimes allow EPDs to be misused. For example, some proposed legislation and procurement language do not follow the standards and permit comparisons across PCRs [product category rules] or ignore impacts over the full life cycle of a product, which may be a detriment to the en-tire structure. This frequent misinterpretation demonstrates that guidance and information are needed in the marketplace.
Ascent Winter 2023: Page 10
