Environmental Product Declarations in Austria hold potential for communication as standardized environmental information label

In Austria, demand for responsible production and use of building and construction materials among conscious suppliers, producers and end users has made Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) gain popularity as means of independent, holistic, verified environmental performance measurements of a product or service for open marketing claims.

As it has been reaffirmed at the EPD workshop in Vienna, major stakeholders and players encouraged by different factors such as; value chain, market constrains and growing demands by consumers, own processes in house knowledge, scarcity and supply risk of resources, profitability etc; believe EPDs in Austria are gaining favor, and will help differentiate environmental performance of products, but without leading the ranking between good or bad.

 

EPD workshop documentation

Some important examples by Austrian industry representatives were shown at the event that was taking place at Oct. 11, 2011 and can be read and download here.

Sustainable buildings awarded for the first time in Austria

The first real estate projects received the DGNB-certificate for sustainable building in Austria. The The Austrian society for sustainable real estate economics (ÖGNI) prices nine office and trade buildings and one kindergarten. In four projects the ÖGNI founding member PE Central and Eastern Europe carried out the audit for the certification.

With the help of the detailed planning, PE accomplished a pre-certification of the „SPAR climate protection supermarket“ (Murau), which reached the gold status. PE continues to conduct the project and after completion, PE is going to examine the SPAR climate protection market again, according to the sustainability criteria of the DGNB certification. Furthermore, PE CEE audited the kindergarten Guntramsdorf as well as the two Viennese office buildings BIZ ZWEI and RUND VIER of the IC project development, which all has been certified or pre-certified with silver.

With the DGNB certificate, buildings are examined and assessed for their sustainable method of construction according to about 50 criteria in six topics (ecology, economy, socio-cultural and functional aspects, technology, processes and location). ÖGNI took over the proven system of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) and adapted it to the Austrian market.