Turkey – Vitra published its first EPD according EU-standards

Turkish building material manufacturers are increasingly developing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). After Turk Ytong in 2011, several leading producers are now following suit in order to demonstrate their commitment to responsible production and products.

In April 2012 the leading Turkish ceramic producer Eczacıbaşı – VitrA published its first EPD according the new European norm EN 15804 for sanitary ceramic products. In this product category Eczacıbaşı – VitrA is the first company in Europe to provide such a declaration and underlines Eczacıbaşı’s commitment to sustainability and environmental efficiency.  

All EPD’s published by Turkish companies until now have been developed under the label of the German Institute für Bauen und Umwelt (IBU).

New Enterprise Sustainability Performance Software

PE INTERNATIONAL launches SoFi 5 delivering substantial advances in Enterprise Sustainability Performance (ESP), and takes to market pioneering new standards for corporate environmental footprinting and enterprise-wide sustainability improvement

Sustainable business software provider PE INTERNATIONAL makes with the launch of SoFi 5, the lives of executives tasked with sustainability management much easier. With its new and advanced intuitive functionality, SoFi 5 helps improves sustainability in every element of an enterprise’s operations and supply chain; be they energy consumption, water use, carbon emissions or any other kind of social, environmental and economic impacts.

This latest version of SoFi software is capable of intuitively determining a company’s potential performance gaps and responding appropriately with peer-tested improvement recommendations, fully appraised for cost estimates and expected results.

Manage environmental, social and economic impacts

In a nutshell, SoFi 5 ESP software helps enterprises understand and manage their total environmental, social and economic impacts in five key phases:

1) It builds an information landscape by aggregating all the sustainability data in an organization.

2) It measures current sustainability performance against extensive sector-specific benchmark datasets.

3) It finds performance gaps and identifies, evaluates and cost-benefit-analyses real-world improvement opportunities.

4) It helps build and execute ongoing improvement plans.

5) It helps communicates the results. Armed with this valuable output any sustainability-tasked executive can then communicate the enterprise’s success to customers, contractors, suppliers and stakeholders.

Sector leaders worldwide benifit from this technology

Major companies already benefitting from this technology include Siemens which helped its tier 1 suppliers to reduce energy cost by up to 17%; DekaBank which saved 300,000 Euros in energy and paper costs during the first 6 months alone; Deutsche Post DHL which increased carbon efficiency for its own operations and its subcontractors by 12% over 3 years; as well as similar success stories from Kraft Foods, Adidas and Munich Re amongst many other sector leaders worldwide.

Discover Enterprise Sustainability Performance for your business – watch the Video

Free Whitepaper - Transparency and the Role of Environmental Product Declarations

As the world’s consumption of natural resources continues to grow at an ever increasing rate, the design and manufacture of environmentally responsible products is no longer a luxury but a necessity. From electronics to textiles to food production, producers are giving increased attention to the environmental impact of their products across the entire product life cycle. These considerations span design and manufacturing through actual use to end-of-life. Such efforts from producers are now leading towards the collection and compilation of relevant environmental data. This data helps identify opportunities for improvement along the supply chain, often taking the form of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, there are many ways to
distribute this data.

Everyone benefits when a product’s claim of environmental sustainability is easily validated against objective and transparent criteria, thereby simplifying the process of making informed direct comparisons among similar products. An environmental product declaration (EPD) is a validation tool that offers manufacturers a standard approach for assessing the environmental impact of their products and provides buyers with an effective framework for making direct product comparisons. As such, an EPD addresses the needs of both manufacturers and buyers seeking clear, credible and precise information.

This UL white paper discusses the use and importance of EPDs in the validation and certification of life cycle-based product environmental impacts. The paper then reviews the steps in creating EPDs consistent with the requirements of ISO 14025 2006, Environmental labels and declarations—Type III environmental declarations— Principles and procedures, and discusses the important role of an EPD program operator in developing and running an effective EPD program. The report concludes with a look at potential developments regarding the use of EPDs in support of product environmental claims.

Open publication - Free publishing - More building

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