Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) have long served as the cornerstone for presenting high-quality, product-level sustainability data in a standardised format.
As companies face increasingly stringent regulations such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), there is a pressing need to enhance traditional reporting methods.
Digital Product Passports (DPPs) now dynamically complement EPDs by delivering real-time, interactive data throughout a product’s lifecycle. This article examines both approaches—detailing what EPDs and DPPs are, how they are created and integrated, and how they synergise to enhance product sustainability management.
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)
EPDs are third-party verified documents that quantify a product’s environmental impact over its entire life cycle.
These declarations adhere to internationally recognised standards such as ISO 14025 and are based on comprehensive Lifecycle Assessments (LCAs) conducted in line with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044.
This 2013 research paper explains how EPDs transform detailed LCA data into accessible environmental performance summaries. This transparency enables you to benchmark products, compare environmental impacts objectively, and make informed procurement decisions.
EPDs play several important roles:
- Benchmarking and Comparability: They allow organisations and consumers to compare the environmental performance of similar products.
- Regulatory Compliance: With directives such as the CSRD requiring accurate sustainability reporting, EPDs provide the reliable data needed for compliance.
- Market Transparency: In sectors like construction—where, for example, Norwegian public projects may require a minimum number of EPD-verified products—EPDs help build consumer trust and secure market access
Developing an EPD involves several critical steps:
1. Conducting a Comprehensive LCA:
Data is collected from every stage of a product’s lifecycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal.
Recent advancements in LCA methodologies have significantly improved data accuracy. These advancements ensure that the environmental impacts—such as energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions—are quantified precisely.
2. Compiling the EPD Report:
The results of the LCA are then summarized in a standardised report. This document, structured according to specific Product Category Rules (PCRs), presents key environmental indicators in a format that stakeholders can readily compare. PCRs, as outlined in literature from Minkov and colleagues, ensure that EPDs are consistent and comparable across products within the same category.
3. Third-Party Verification:
To ensure the credibility and reliability of the data, the EPD must be independently verified. This step, which is emphasised in industry guidelines, adds a layer of trust and confirms that the information adheres to international standards.
4. Publication:
Once verified, the EPD is published and made available to regulators, customers, and the public. This transparency is not only essential for compliance but also enhances your brand’s reputation by demonstrating a commitment to sustainability.
While the creation of EPDs can be resource-intensive, recent digital tools have streamlined many aspects of the LCA process, reducing costs and improving efficiency.
Benefits of EPDs
EPDs provide a clear, comparable snapshot of a product’s environmental performance. Relying on standardised LCA methodologies enables more precise benchmarking, supports compliance with evolving sustainability regulations, and enhances market transparency.
For instance, when products are compared using consistent metrics, decision-makers can easily identify areas for improvement and drive innovation.
Limitations of EPDs
Despite these advantages, traditional EPDs are typically static documents—often distributed as PDFs—that do not update automatically with production changes.
This static nature can result in outdated information if improvements in manufacturing processes occur. Furthermore, gathering and standardising extensive LCA data remains challenging, although recent advancements have begun to address these issues.
What are Digital Product Passports (DPPs)?
Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are the digital evolution of traditional EPDs. Unlike static documents, DPPs are designed to be dynamic, continuously updated digital records that provide a holistic view of a product’s lifecycle.
Accessible via technologies such as QR codes, RFID tags, or NFC, DPPs capture real-time information on raw material composition, manufacturing processes, supply chain data, and end-of-life handling for products.
This digital record offers unparalleled transparency and is increasingly mandated by regulations such as the ESPR, which requires that products manufactured and sold in the EU include a DPP by 2030.
Implementing DPPs offers several critical benefits that complement the information provided by EPDs:
- Real-Time Updates and Transparency: Because DPPs are dynamic, they continually update product data, reflecting any improvements in manufacturing or changes in environmental impact immediately.
- Enhanced Consumer Engagement: With a simple scan of a product’s smart tag, consumers gain instant access to detailed sustainability data, enabling them to make more informed decisions and actively participate in a circular economy.
- Streamlined Data Management: By integrating DPPs with existing digital systems, companies can reduce redundancy in data collection, ensuring that sustainability information is both comprehensive and up-to-date.
- Future-Proofing Compliance: As regulations such as the ESPR and CSRD evolve, DPPs ensure that your reporting processes remain current, thereby reducing the risk of non-compliance.
These benefits are not just theoretical; they are already being realised in industries like fashion, where Digital Product Passports help authenticate products and drive resale, thereby extending product lifecycles.
Synergy between EPDs and DPPs
While EPDs provide a rigorously verified snapshot of a product’s environmental performance, they tend to be static. In contrast, DPPs offer dynamic, continuously updated data that can capture changes in real time.
Integrating these two tools creates a powerful system in which the robust, audited data of an EPD is continuously refreshed and made interactive via the DPP. This integration ensures that every improvement in production or material efficiency is immediately visible to stakeholders, enhancing decision-making and regulatory compliance.
For example, if a manufacturing process is optimised to reduce energy use, the dynamic DPP will reflect this improvement, thereby updating the environmental performance metrics originally captured in the EPD.
This seamless integration supports ongoing sustainability initiatives and provides an up-to-date record that meets both internal and external reporting requirements.
Integrating Environmental Product Declarations with Digital Product Passports offers a robust and future-proof solution to sustainability reporting. EPDs deliver the validated environmental data essential for benchmarking and compliance, while DPPs ensure that this information remains dynamic and continuously updated.
This synergy not only supports compliance with evolving regulations like the ESPR, CSRD, and CSDDD but also drives continuous improvement, enhances operational efficiency, and builds lasting consumer trust.
Conclusion
If you are looking to transform your sustainability reporting with precise, real-time data that aligns with modern regulatory standards, it’s time to adopt an integrated approach.
Combining Environmental Product Declarations with Digital Product Passports can help ensure that your environmental performance is accurately tracked and transparently communicated across your entire supply chain.
Embrace the power of integrating EPDs and DPPs to drive innovation and secure a competitive advantage in today’s circular economy.