Life Cycle Association New Zealand (LCANZ) and Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society (ALCAS) are currently working on the development of
an Australasian EPD scheme based on the well-established German IBU EPD
system.
Global markets increasingly demand science-based, verified and
comparable information about the environmental performance of products
and services.
Environmental Product Declarations, or EPDs, provide a
standardized report on the environmental impacts linked to a product or
service over its entire life cycle. However, there is currently no
standardized internationally-recognised EPD programme in place.
LCANZ and its Australian counterpart, ALCAS, are currently
looking to fill this gap for Australasia. The two not-for-profit
associations are partnering to investigate the development of an
Australasian scheme similar to the well-established European scheme run
by the Institute for Construction and Environment (IBU).
Barbara Nebel, President of LCANZ, is excited to work together
with ALCAS to establish a cross-Tasman EPD scheme: “It makes most sense
for New Zealand and Australia to have one scheme across the Tasman,
making it a lot more efficient for companies to develop their EPDs.”
The impetus to examine IBU’s EPD scheme was that 25 European
organizations recently signed a MoU to establish a Pan-EU EPD platform.
“The European ECO-EPD platform with 17 countries and numerous GBC is the
leading one in the world”, says Barbara Nebel, President of LCANZ.
David Baggs, ALCAS President, underlines the goal, “This
initiative that the Board of ALCAS and LCANZ are undertaking, it will
ensure that all EPDs performed in Australia and New Zealand will be
compatible with those in the EU will facilitate the export of
Australasian manufactured goods into the EU - the largest single
marketplace in the world with a GDP of nearly USD$18 trillion.”
The
German EPD scheme, administered by IBU, is a leading force in the
ECO-EPD platform and has offered their support to developing an
Australasian scheme.
