About John
John brings a clear, research-driven perspective on the EPD, LCA and HPD space and keeps a close pulse on environmental trends and standards in North America, helping clients understand where the industry is heading and how to get there.
Recent Articles
BREEAM Materials credits: win specs with solid data
BREEAM’s Materials category looks small on paper but often swings the final rating. If your products arrive with a robust, third-party EPD, you hand design teams an easy credit—and nudge competitors off the shortlist.
EPDs Win Specs and Tenders
Every week, bid managers lose hours hunting for proof that their product meets the carbon limits hidden deep inside tender documents. An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) drops that scramble. It pins down climate data in a format that owners, architects, and public buyers already trust. When the clock is ticking, the bid that arrives with a current EPD usually reaches the shortlist before one packed with promises but no numbers.
Keep Your EPD Alive: Validity & Updates
Nothing kills a spec faster than an expired Environmental Product Declaration. Yet many manufacturers forget that the five-year timer, moving targets, and surprise data calls. Here’s how to avoid the last-minute scramble.
"No One Asks for EPDs" Is a Myth
If your reps swear nobody ever asks for Environmental Product Declarations, blame the sales funnel, not the market. Buyers who need EPDs simply drop you from the shortlist before the first call. The real demand hides in tender language, not sales calls.
Transport Data: Trucks, Trains, Reality
If your EPD feels stuck at the border between factory gate and construction site, nine times out of ten the holdup is transport data. Carriers sit on pallets of numbers but pull them together about as fast as a dial-up modem. Here’s how to tease out what you need, and what to use when the data ghosts you.
From Raw Data to Published EPD in Six Moves
“Third-party EPD” can sound like a six-letter mystery. In reality it’s a relay race: data leaves your plant, races through an LCA engine, gets scrutinized by an independent referee, and crosses the finish line at a program operator. Follow this lap-by-lap breakdown so your product earns its declaration without lost time—or lost sleep.
Multi-Site Manufacturing: One Product, Clear Carbon Math
One widget, three plants, five time zones, your procurement team loves the flexibility, but your LCA analyst sees a migraine. Different electricity grids and transport routes can swing cradle-to-gate emissions by triple-digit percentages. Here is how to keep the numbers honest and auditors happy.
Module A: Upfront Carbon Decoded
Module A covers everything that happens before a product reaches the jobsite—extraction, processing, factory work, trucking, and on-site installation. Get this slice wrong and the rest of your EPD wobbles. Nail it and you cut the biggest chunk of embodied carbon right where specifiers are staring. Here is how to make Module A numbers rock-solid and sales-ready.
Module B: The Use Phase Reality Check
Manufacturers often obsess over A1–A3 raw-material numbers yet forget that specifiers keep scrolling to Module B. If you cannot show how a product behaves in the messy middle of a building’s life, you risk losing on bids that score whole-life carbon. The seven sub-modules track every kilowatt, gasket swap, and drop of rinse water once your product is installed. Nail them, and you turn an LCA line item into a powerful proof of performance.
CE Mark 2025: Decoding the New CPR Rulebook
Europe’s Construction Products Regulation just hit refresh. As of 7 January 2025, every CE-marked product must share more than strength and safety stats. Digital Product Passports will soon surface carbon footprints and recycling clues in a single scan, and early pilots already cut site waste by up to fifteen percent (Build Up, 2025). For manufacturers, that shift spells both new paperwork and a fresh edge in specification battles.
Life Cycle Assessment: The X-Ray of Product Impact
A new contractor spec drops on your desk, and there it is: “Provide LCA data.” If the term still feels like alphabet soup, you are not alone. Yet manufacturers meeting this ask win bids faster and fend off cheaper rivals that lack proof of performance.
LEED v4 to v5: Your EPD Playbook
When LEED v4 landed, EPDs felt like extra credit. With v5, they are a front-row requirement. Every specifier now scans for transparent carbon math, and projects short-list brands that can prove it fast. Manufacturers that treat EPDs as paperwork risk missing bids before they begin.
Module C: The End-of-Life Wild Card
Most teams sweat over raw-material data, then slap a generic “landfill” line on the last page of the LCA. Trouble is, end-of-life assumptions now sway procurement scores, circular-economy claims, and even demolition permits. Ignore Module C and you hand rivals free points.
Resinous Flooring EPDs: Who’s Really Winning?
Sustainability has turned resinous flooring from a commodity into a credentials race. Specifiers now scan databases before samples. If your product’s environmental story is missing or expired, it may never reach the shortlist.
LEED v5: Embodied Carbon Moves to Center Stage
LEED v5 flips the script: before a project can claim even its first point, the team must tally the cradle-to-gate carbon of concrete, steel, glass and other high-impact materials. That shake-up puts Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) in the spotlight—and manufacturers without them risk being locked out of specifications from day one.
Digital Product Passports and the New EU Ecodesign Rulebook
A quiet deadline is racing toward every factory gate in Europe. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) took effect on 18 July 2024 and, with it, the Digital Product Passport (DPP) became real law instead of buzzy concept. Brussels has now set the clock: product groups on the first ESPR Working Plan, published April 2025, will need passports first, and all physical goods sold in the EU are expected to carry one by 2030. Manufacturers who rely on Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) today have an inside track, but only if they tighten their data house now.
Build Your ROI Calculator for EPDs
Your CFO wants numbers, not vibes. An Environmental Product Declaration feels like paperwork until someone shows how it unlocks bids that were off-limits yesterday. Below is a simple framework you can copy into a spreadsheet today, fed by data points the market already tracks.
