Wallcoverings Association Announces the Release of Global Environmental Product Declarations

The Wallcoverings Association (WA) has announced the release of five industry average Environmental Product Declarations for wallcoverings that were developed by IGI-The Global Wallcoverings Association. The EPDs are accepted internationally and cover five constructions of typical and specialty commercial and residential wallcoverings. The development process spanned two years and included participation by wallcovering manufacturers around the world, including U.S.-based J. Josephson; Len-Tex; LSI Wallcovering; Roysons Corp. and York Wallcoverings. The EPDs can be downloaded from the WA site.

The EPDs are industry average, ISO 14025, Type III, and third-party certified. They are recognized for contributing credits in LEED v4’s Material and Resources Credit 2. The EPDs report the industry average data for each of the product types and were calculated by averaging together lifecycle assessment data from the participating manufacturers. These lifecycle assessments follow the wallcovering industry Product Category Rules released in 2017. The EPDs were authored by Bremen, Germany-based Brands and Values and published by the Institute Bauen und Umwelt e.V. (IBU), an EPD Program operator and global environmental solutions company. In the U.S., they are certified by UL Environments.

“The global wallcoverings industry has worked to bring internationally accepted EPDs to the market,” says Matt Bruno, WA executive director. “The wallcoverings industry has been at the forefront of sustainability efforts, developing the multi-attribute NSF 342 Standard and the W-101 Quality Standard. Publishing EPDs was the next step in bringing transparency and clarity to the sustainability process.”

The equivalent of a sustainability nutrition label, an EPD is a disclosure of the lifecycle-based environmental impacts of a product. It documents environmental impacts from cradle to grave and offers a picture of effects on the atmosphere, water and earth. An EPD helps specifiers and purchasers assess lifecycle impacts and environmental attributes and facilitates product evaluation using factual data that is objective and transparent.