As lighting increasingly moves to a circular economy approach, certifications such as lifecycle assessments (LCAs) and environmental product declarations (EPDs) are going to become more important. Emily Bolts looks at what are they and how they work.
As an industry, we talk about ‘lighting for circularity’ but what is it? It’s a major change, which will enable the shift from a linear to circular economy.
Current common practice, many of us will be only too aware, follows the linear economy of, ‘take’ – extract resources from the earth, ‘make’ – build luminaires and install them, use and ‘waste’ – where only some low value recycling of materials at end of life. In linear economy products are designed to be used and disposed of at end of life.
In a recycling economy, at end of life some materials are recycled and reused in the same or different use chain.
The European Union’s WEEE Directive requires that a luminaire has a crossed-out wheelie bin logo on it, but that does not mean they will be recycled by a lighting manufacturer into another luminaire. In reality, they will likely be shredded with, at best, low value, raw material recovery.
Ultimately, the ‘take, make, use, recycle’ model just uses recycling to validate waste and it does not really fix the core problem.
A circular economy is where products are designed to be serviced upgraded, reused and refurbished so that the precious material energy and labour inputs will last.
MEASURING OUR IMPACT?
As we move to a circular economy, how do we improve our environmental performance and how do we measure our impact?
Currently there are a lot of green labels. The problem with having so many labels is a lack of transparency (what do they tell you?), comparability (how do you compare them?) and fragmentation of the requirements and regulations.
A product can score well in one area and poorly in another; the statistics show the problem with having so many labels are:
- 53% of green claims give vague misleading or unfounded information.
- 40% of claims have no supporting evidence.
- Half of all green labels offer weak or non-existent verification.
There are more than 230 sustainability labels and 100 green energy labels in the EU with very different levels of transparency.
The EU will take measures to disallow this allowing only a select few green labels with certified programmes behind them – substantiating green claims and simplifying the label landscape – for business-to-consumer communication. Let’s now look at what these certified programmes are and how they work.
CERTIFIED PROGRAMMES
- Lifecycle assessments (LCAs). Lifecycle assessment (LCA) is a process of evaluating the effects that a product has on the environment over the entire period of its life thereby increasing resource-use efficiency and decreasing liabilities.
It can be used to study the environmental impact of either a product or the function the product is designed to perform. LCA is commonly referred to as a ‘cradle-to-grave’ analysis. LCA’s key elements are:
- Identify and quantify the environmental loads involved, for example, the energy and raw materials consumed, the emissions and wastes generated,
- evaluate the potential environmental impacts of these loads; and
- assess the options available for reducing these environmental impacts.
An LCA is science-based and covers a wide range of environmental impacts. Calculating greenhouse gas emissions (or a carbon footprint) is just one dimension of an LCA, which can also assess impacts such as ozone depletion, eutrophication, impact on human health and much more.
Results obtained via an LCA can be trusted as they are based on international standards: ISOs 14040 and 14044. This helps to ensure consistency, reliability, and independence from commercial pressure.
The LCA covers lifecycle stages according to the EN standard, the product stage (A1-A3) makes up what is known as the ‘cradle-to-gate’ lifecycle, or from production through to the moment it goes on sale. This covers raw material extraction and processing, processing of secondary material input (for example recycling processes), transport to the manufacturer and manufacturing.
Modules A1, A2, and A3 may be declared as one aggregated module A1-A3. All stages include the provision of all materials, products, and energy, as well as waste processing up to the end-of-waste state or disposal of final residues during the product stage.
The construction stage (A4-A5) covers transport to the building site and installation and construction. Stages A4 and A5 include all impacts and aspects related to any losses during this construction process stage (in other words, production, transport, and waste processing, and disposal of the lost products and materials).
The use phase (B1-B6) considers use or application of the installed product, maintenance, repair, replacement, refurbishment, and operational energy use (for example, operation of the heating system and other building-related installed).
- Environmental product declarations (EPDs). An environmental product declaration, or EPD, is a document that transparently communicates the environmental performance or impact of any product or material over its lifetime.
EPDs are produced based on LCA methodology, and provide a quantitative basis for comparing the environmental impacts of products and services.
Within the construction industry, EPDs support carbon emission reduction by making it possible to compare the impacts of different materials and products to select the most sustainable option.
There are several types of EPDs that cover different life-cycle stages of a product:
- Cradle-to-gate EPD involves only the manufacturing process and harvesting of a material. It has the minimum amount of data for lifecycle assessment.
- Cradle-to-grave EPD includes the whole lifecycle of a product, specifically covering its maintenance but also its the end of life. If you wish to create an EPD for your product or utilise your manufacturer’s EPD, this is the option you should select.
- Cradle-to-gate, with options, includes the minimum requirements that are present in the cradle-to-gate option with a few additional information modules from cradle-to-grave EPD variation.
There is a further term within this, cradle-to-cradle, and is a concept often referred to within the circular economy.
It is a variation of cradle-to-grave, exchanging the waste stage with a recycling process that makes it reusable for another product, essentially ‘closing the loop’. This is why it is also referred to as closed-loop recycling.
WHY USE EPDS?
EPDs are the most universally recognised and are increasingly required certification. They cover most environmental impacts of a product across its entire lifecycle and encompass scope of multiple other labels.
EPDs are largely based on open standards, not proprietary programmes (with some exceptions)
We can use LCAs and EPDs to make sustainable decisions while engineering our products, including asking suppliers for EPDs this will improve our products and services.
If we look at the EPD we can start with the ‘background lifecycle inventory’ (LCI) datasheets. This can look at gate to gate, cradle to gate and cradle to grave, accounting for the energy and material flows into and out of the environment that are associated with producing a material, component, or assembly.
Product category rule (PCR) is a set of core requirements for developing environmental product declarations for construction products and services, construction elements and integrated technical systems used in any type of construction works. It is detailed in ISO 21930:2017 Sustainability in buildings and civil engineering works [2].
Product-specific lifecycle assessment (LCA) deals with the compilation and evaluation of the input, outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its lifecycle. It is detailed in ISO 14040:2006 (2022) environmental management, life cycle assessment principles and framework [3].
An EPD provides quantified environmental data using predetermined parameters and, where relevant, additional environmental information based around ISO 21930 Type III EPDs. Type III environmental declarations present quantified environmental information on the lifecycle of a product to enable comparisons between products fulfilling the same function.
WHAT IS DRIVING DEMAND FOR EPDS?
Products with EPDs can contribute towards credits under several green building programmes, including LEED, BREEAM and Green Globes.
EPDs can be used to show compliance with environmental criteria specified in bid or tendering documents, and in some regions are required.
In some regions, too, governments are requiring EPDs for certain products. Current market signals show that this scope will expand.
EPDs can help measure the impact of products and optimise processes, for example component and material selections can be optimised during procurement.
EPDs can support marketing a product’s environmental performance and also may be required by the ‘do no specific harm’ principle to show an environmental feature does not come at the cost of another.
Interest in the whole-building lifecycle assessment (LCA) of a building from specifiers and owners is a further driver here. Product EPDs provide product-specific performance data that can be used towards the creation of the whole-building LCA.
BETTER UNDERSTANDING EPDS
EPDs help to explain the full environmental impact of a product and help to engineer more sustainable products.
Governments are starting to require EPDs along with building certifications, such as LEED, and award credits for including products with EPDs.
Sustainability-minded specifiers and customers are increasingly requesting products with EPDs. Promoting harmonisation of EPDs between regions and programme operators backed by standards ISO 14040 and ISO 14025 is a further factor.
EPDs enable comparisons between products fulfilling the same function. An EPD is usually valid for five years and is generated according to the relevant standards. Construction EPDs are based on the ISO 14040/14044, ISO 14025, EN 15804 or ISO 21930 standards.
All EPDs need to be verified by an independent third-party verifier before they can be published. This ensures accuracy, reliability and ensures that the EPD conforms to the requirements of the relevant PCR.
Once your EPD has been verified by an independent third party, it is ready to be put into the public domain via publication. To do this, you need to submit the EPD document for publication to the programme operator, which will process, register, and publish your EPD.
Third-party verification is a key factor in why EPDs are valued for their impartial, standardised, and comparable information.
It is a core element of the international standard which defines EPDs: ISO 14025. Without third-party verification, your EPD will not be recognised by many certification schemes, regulations, and procurement requirements.
CONCLUSIONS
In summary, as we move to a circular economy, we need to fully understand how we measure our impact. We have explored several methods to do this with global standards, such as LCAs and EPDs.
Using LCAs can be valuable as a process for evaluating the effects that a product has on the environment over the entire period of its life. They can be used to study the environmental impact of either a product or the function the product is designed to perform looking at ‘cradle-to-grave’ or ‘cradle-to-cradle’ analysis.
EPDs, meanwhile, help to explain the full environmental impact of a product; they help to engineer more sustainable products.
EPDs enable comparisons between products fulfilling the same function. An EPD is usually valid for five years and is generated according to the relevant standards.
Construction EPDs are based on the ISO 14040/14044, ISO 14025, EN 15804 or ISO 21930 standards. All EPDs need to be verified by an independent third-party verifier before they can be published.
This is a key factor in why EPDs are valued for their impartial, standardised, and comparable information.
Ultimately, we come back to the fundamental position that the best use of time and resource is to encourage as many manufacturers as possible to develop their full catalogue of EPDs and LCAs.
It is by doing this that familiarity and understanding of the benefits of EPDs and LCAs will become second nature to the industry, and the use of the most relevant source documents for circularity information will become established for the greater good.
Emily Bolt is the ILP’s Vice President – Technical and technical services manager (systems architect) at Signify.
- This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the September edition of Lighting Journal. Click on the link to the edition to read the full article.
Image credit to ‘Vlad Hilitanu, supplied by Signify’
