About Walker
Walker Ryan is a climate-tech entrepreneur focused on driving industrial decarbonization through better data. As the founder and CEO of Parq, he helps manufacturers generate high-quality, third-party–verified carbon disclosures at scale—accelerating a traditionally slow and expensive process. Before starting Parq, Walker led over $200 million in sustainability-focused investments as VP of Strategy & Growth at ReStream Solutions, following earlier experience in investment banking at Deutsche Bank. He brings a rare mix of capital markets expertise and hands-on sustainability knowledge to tackling the infrastructure of industrial emissions.
Recent Articles
L.A. Green Building Code: Embodied Carbon Rules You Can’t Ignore
Los Angeles just strapped a booster pack onto California’s already-tough CALGreen code. Starting July 1 2024, big projects must cap the global-warming potential of concrete, with steel and glass right behind. If your product ships without a bullet-proof, facility-specific EPD, specifiers may swipe left.
Virginia’s Asphalt-Recycling Tax Credit, Decoded
Virginia lawmakers flirted with a 20 percent income-tax credit for buying asphalt-recycling equipment. House Bill 2740 stalled in February 2025, yet its core ideas keep resurfacing in Richmond and in copy-cat bills elsewhere. If you make or lay asphalt, here is why the proposal still matters for your plant ledger, your EPD numbers, and your sales pipeline.
Austin Greenlights Hempcrete—Code Change, EPD Opportunity
On July 10 2025, Austin becomes the first major U.S. city to fold Appendix BL of the 2024 International Residential Code into law. That one vote swaps “alternative material” red tape for a straight-up permit path for hemp-lime walls. If you sell hemp shives, lime binders, or pre-cast blocks, the clock just started ticking on your environmental paperwork.
New York’s A8202/S8000: the next Buy-Clean wake-up
A bill now moving through Albany would turn New York’s current “please disclose” embodied-carbon guidance into a binding requirement starting January 1 2026. If your concrete, asphalt, or steel ships to a state-funded job without a product-specific EPD, the bid may never even open. Tick-tock.
Embodied Carbon Crashes the 2027 IECC-R Party
Two freshly filed code proposals—RE196-24 and RE137-24—aim to drag embodied carbon from the footnotes of voluntary standards into the body of America’s next residential energy code. If they pass, every two-by-four, insulation board, and window frame will sit under the same carbon microscope as HVAC loads. Manufacturers that show up with airtight EPD data will win specs while laggards scramble.
The Most Used PCRs in 2025
Hundreds of rulebooks jostle for attention, yet a tiny handful soak up most of the traffic. Here is the scoreboard for 2025, no advice, just numbers.
Buy Clean Massachusetts: Embodied-carbon rulebook
Beacon Hill is weighing HD.3507, a bill that would turn embodied-carbon data into a ticket of entry for public contracts. If you sell concrete, steel, rebar, or engineered wood in Massachusetts, the countdown to verifiable Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) could start the moment the bill clears committee.
Zero-Carbon Renovation Fund: New Gold Rush for Low-Carbon Materials
Massachusetts wants to pour $300 million into making old buildings all-electric, energy-tight, and built back with low-embodied-carbon components. If you manufacture concrete mixes, insulation, panels, or fixtures, HD.3171 could steer a torrent of public money toward products that prove their climate math. That proof almost always means a rock-solid EPD.
FDES XML Standard in France: Quickfire Guide
Bidding on a French building project without an FDES feels like showing up at Cannes without a film. The Environmental and Health Declaration Form is the ticket to enter France’s RE2020 market, a scene now worth an estimated €35 billion a year (CSTB, 2024). Skip it and your product may never reach the screening room.
Untangling UL Environment for EPDs
Thinking about publishing your next Environmental Product Declaration through UL Solutions? Their badge carries weight, yet the fine print can trip up busy manufacturing teams. Here’s the fast-track briefing before you sign on the dotted line.
INIES: France’s Essential EPD Hub
Planning to sell construction products in France? Your environmental data must flow through INIES—the national clearinghouse for verified FDES and PEP profiles. Miss that step and RE2020 project teams will swipe left, even if your product performs like a hero on carbon.
Stichting MRPI: Dutch EPD Fast Track
Selling into the Netherlands without an MRPI-registered EPD is like showing up to a speed-dating event without a name tag—you’ll be invisible long before you can pitch performance claims. Dutch building codes, public tenders, and most big contractors now pull environmental scores straight from the Nationale Milieudatabase (NMD). Only EPDs vetted by Stichting MRPI slide into that database automatically, which means your product lands on the shortlist while competitors wait at the gate.
PEP Ecopassport: Plug-and-Play EPD Operator for Tech Gear
Wondering where the electrical and electronics crowd parks its EPDs? Step inside PEP Ecopassport, the French-born program operator that translates circuit boards, HVAC drives, and data-center racks into plain-language footprint numbers—without forcing you to learn a new dialect of sustainability jargon.
BRE Global: Should You Publish Your EPD Here?
For UK-focused manufacturers, BRE Global looks like the obvious EPD gatekeeper. Its name shows up in BREEAM manuals, BIM libraries, and spec sheets from Manchester to Melbourne. Yet size, rules, and service model matter when you are racing to hit a tender deadline. Here is the operator’s real footprint and how it compares.
SCS Global Services: What to Know Before Publishing
Choosing an EPD program operator can feel like picking a phone plan: hidden fees, patchy coverage, and long lock-in periods lurk in the fine print. SCS Global Services promises broad recognition, a hands-on LCA team, and ANSI-backed credibility—but the path from data pull to public declaration still holds surprises for busy manufacturers.
PAS 2080: Your Ticket to UK Low-Carbon Infrastructure
Tender documents across the UK now slip a quiet question into the technical specs: “Show evidence you comply with PAS 2080.” Skip it and your bid can vanish before price talks even start. The 2023 revision sharpened rules on embodied carbon, built a bridge to EN 15804-based EPDs, and set a ticking clock—owners can reject data older than two years. Manufacturers that master the paperwork will ride a procurement tailwind; the rest face extra site visits and awkward clarifications.
EPDs: A Marketer’s Secret Weapon
Your product may boast flawless performance, but if the specifier cannot see a credible environmental score next to it, you are out of the running before the first call. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) turn invisible supply-chain data into a story architects can cite and purchasing teams can trust.
HPDs & EPDs: Same Data, Different Payoff
Still confusing Health Product Declarations with Environmental Product Declarations? You are not alone. They serve different audiences, yet most of the raw process data you gathered for an LCA or EPD can power an HPD too, turning one transparency project into two and unlocking more rating-system points (LEED, BREEAM, WELL) with near-zero extra headache.
Environmental Product Declarations: Why They Matter Now
A single missing EPD can boot your product from a bid faster than a grumpy bouncer. Yet manufacturers still treat declarations as optional paperwork. With new rating systems, data-hungry specifiers, and carbon math on every tender, skipping an EPD in 2025 is like launching a phone without a camera—possible, but painfully uncompetitive.
Health Product Declarations: Counting the Payback
The ask seems simple: create a Health Product Declaration and move on. Yet many manufacturers hesitate, worried about cost, data hunting, and the infamous "round two" of ingredient questions. Here is why that hesitation leaves money on the table.
Anatomy of an EPD: Decode Each Section
An Environmental Product Declaration looks tidy on a download page yet hides sixty-plus pages of acronyms, tables, and colour-coded impact charts. Knowing which pages to scan, and which to bookmark, lets manufacturers spot red flags, prove compliance, and craft sharper sales pitches in minutes instead of days.
EPD Impact Categories in Plain English
EPDs live or die by a handful of impact categories. Understand what each metric actually measures and you can steer product design, marketing claims, and bid sheets with confidence instead of guesswork.
When No PCR Exists: How To Forge One
Running into a product with no Product Category Rule feels like opening Monopoly and finding the rulebook missing. You *could* play by house rules, but the bank will call foul. Below is the fast-track map manufacturers use to write the missing rulebook—and get back to winning bids—without drowning in redlines.
EN 15804 +A2: Your New EPD Rulebook
Feeling whiplash from the constant upgrades to Environmental Product Declarations? EN 15804 +A2 rewires the core rules for every construction-product EPD published in Europe. Miss a clause and your declaration may land in the reject pile—or worse, the spec that should have been yours ends up with a faster rival. Below is the condensed playbook for staying compliant while keeping sales momentum.
LEED Zero: Turning Credits Into Concrete Wins
Net-zero is no longer a buzzword, it is a score on the LEED chart that architects track as closely as fire-safety codes. LEED Zero rewards buildings that push past “less bad” and hit zero for carbon, energy, water, or waste. If your product shaves even a fraction off those impact tallies, you move up the spec sheet. Here is the playbook for manufacturers who want to ride that wave, not watch it from shore.
EPD First, HPD Fast: Double ROI, Half Effort
Collecting cradle-to-gate numbers for an EPD feels like herding every invoice, utility bill, and transport ticket your plant has printed in a year. The good news: once that spreadsheet is tamed, ninety percent of what a Health Product Declaration asks for is already in your files. Turning one disclosure into two is a quick extra lap that multiplies bid-day advantages without multiplying headaches.
Part B in PCRs: the product type-specific fine print for your EPD
Ever wondered why a rulebook called "Part A" is never alone? Part B is its sidekick, quietly deciding how your flooring plank or HVAC coil gets measured, compared, and ultimately specced.
baubook: Austria’s Eco Database Decoded
If you want your insulation, cladding, or piping specified on Austrian projects aiming for klimaaktiv gold, baubook is practically the guest list at the door. Miss the list and designers will swap you out for a product that is enrolled. The good news: getting in is simpler than many first think, if you understand the rules, speak the lingo, and feed the system clean, verified data.
Pick the Right PCR, Win the Bid
Grab the wrong Product Category Rule and your Environmental Product Declaration can stall six months, miss a bid date, or fail verification outright. The right PCR, in contrast, clears a straight runway for life-cycle modeling, third-party review, and faster market access. Here is how manufacturers zero in on the rulebook that fits their product, region, and timeline.
Secondary Data: Hidden Risk in EPD Projects
Life-cycle databases are fantastic for idea-stage modeling, but stake your final EPD on generic proxies and you invite credibility gaps, lost bids, and frantic last-minute data chases. The smartest manufacturers swap proxy shortcuts for laser-targeted primary data, without burying their engineering teams in spreadsheets. Here’s why.
Non-Hazardous Waste: The Sleeper Metric in Your LCA
Carbon steals the spotlight, yet every EPD still prints a boldfaced line for “non-hazardous waste disposed.” Mess up that line and specifiers will question the rest of your data. Here is how to nail the number and even trim it before the LCA clock starts ticking.
Module D: Your EPD’s Second Life Credit
Manufacturers lose bids when they ignore the carbon story after demolition. Module D adds that missing chapter, turning future reuse and recycling potential into hard-number benefits right on the EPD front page. Here is why skipping it can cost you projects—and how smart data prep keeps the calculation painless.
Finding the Right PCR: Your Shortcut Guide
Pick the wrong Product Category Rule and your EPD project can stall for months. Choose the right one and the declaration writes itself, shaving weeks off verification and letting sales teams wave that green badge sooner.
Which PCR Fits Resinous Flooring?
Specifiers crave EPDs, yet the rulebooks behind them can feel like grabbing phone chargers in a dark hotel room. They all look right until the plug refuses to fit. Below is your cheat sheet to the PCRs steering resinous flooring disclosures in mid-2025 and the fresh rules landing soon.
Your EPD Can Pay Dividends
You spent months corralling plant data, then celebrated when the verified document arrived. Now the file sits in a shared drive while your sales team keeps pitching on price. An EPD is more than proof of good practice. Treat it as a revenue lever, and the math starts to look interesting.
ISO 14025: The Passport Behind Credible EPDs
A nutrition label is only useful when everyone trusts what is on the back of the box. The same applies to an Environmental Product Declaration. ISO 14025 sets the rules that keep every EPD honest, comparable, and accepted on job sites where a single missing credential can erase you from the bid list overnight.
From LCA to EPD: Navigating PCRs and Verification Paths
An LCA can feel like a raw data avalanche. A Product Category Rule (PCR) funnels that data into a language the market speaks, and a verified Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) turns it into a passport that wins specs. Done right, this journey is shorter and smoother than many teams assume.
Four Environmental Impact Categories You Should Know
You poured months into perfecting a product, yet one missing number can still keep you off the bid list. Impact categories like global warming or regional water scarcity may read like jargon, but project teams now judge them as sharply as price. Miss the mark and you risk being locked out before the conversation even starts.
illbruck nails seamless EPD data collection with Parq
When illbruck needed Environmental Product Declarations, Parq made the month-long process feel like a game of Pac-Man—gobbling up their data with almost no effort from their team. Their experts stayed focused while our platform handled the heavy lifting, delivering results in just weeks.
Life Cycle Inventory (LCI): From Numbers to Results
Most EPD delays start long before the verifier opens your report. The bottleneck is Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) data that arrives late, arrives messy, or never arrives at all. Master the basics below and you will cut weeks off every credential project—whether you tackle it in-house or team up with a white-glove partner.
