On 28 Jan­u­ary, the Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) held its third com­mu­ni­ca­tions work­shop for mem­bers. The focus of the event, which this year took place in Cologne in coop­er­a­tion with the Angela Neu­mann PR Agency, was the top­ic of com­mu­ni­ca­tions regard­ing EPDs. Among oth­er events, the IBU Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­u­al was pre­sent­ed for the first time.

IBU_KommunikationsworkshopAround 30 rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous IBU mem­ber com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pat­ed in the work­shop, enti­tled ‘Suc­cess­ful­ly Com­mu­ni­cat­ing EPDs in Mar­ket­ing, PR and Sales’. Along with reports on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al IBU activ­i­ties, along with the association’s pub­lic rela­tions work, the work­shop revolved around the ques­tion of how mem­bers can bet­ter pub­li­cise the advan­tages and impor­tance of their EPDs for sus­tain­able build­ing. ‘Every mem­ber com­pa­ny and every mem­ber asso­ci­a­tion should use EPDs to raise aware­ness of their activ­i­ties’, accord­ing to com­mu­ni­ca­tions expert Angela Neu­mann. ‘You are tak­ing a stand for sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the com­pa­ny and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able build­ing. This applies to both inter­nal and exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions’. To illus­trate, two prac­ti­cal exam­ples were shared. Raban Siebers, expert for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and build­ing oper­a­tions at the bau­fo­rum­stahl e.V. report­ed on pos­si­ble uses, expe­ri­ence with, and advan­tages of asso­ci­a­tion EPDs. Dur­ing the cre­ation of one of these, data from 19 Euro­pean steel plants was com­piled into one EPD. The EPD there­fore con­tained rep­re­sen­ta­tive val­ues for all of the steel man­u­fac­tur­ers rep­re­sent­ed by bau­fo­rum­stahl. ‘Often, steel traders are sim­ply unable to keep track of which man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty the steel comes from. There­fore, we decid­ed to cre­ate an EPD that would be valid for all fac­to­ries in our asso­ci­a­tion’, explained Siebers. It also became appar­ent that the val­ues that were deter­mined were clear­ly under the aver­age val­ues used in the life cycle assess­ments. Accord­ing to Siebers, if the pur­pose of their use is clear, EPDs are suit­able for a fair and objec­tive com­par­i­son of prod­ucts, and even alter­na­tive build­ing meth­ods: ‘For instance, a prod­uct may be less expen­sive to buy over­seas. But through trans­port alone, you ulti­mate­ly also pay the price with a poor­er life cycle assessment’.

 Lau­ra Cre­mer, Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Man­ag­er at the floor cov­er­ing man­u­fac­tur­er, Inter­face, report­ed on the use of EPDs in com­pa­ny com­mu­ni­ca­tion: ‘Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not a beau­ty con­test, where you dress up with as many labels as pos­si­ble. EPDs help cus­tomers to not only look at the price, but also to pay atten­tion to the eco­log­i­cal aspects of their deci­sions. The ver­i­fi­ca­tion, or the renun­ci­a­tion, of an eval­u­a­tion rep­re­sents a spe­cial strength of EPDs. ‘In this way, EPDs offer com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing state­ments about the envi­ron­men­tal effects of a prod­uct, using quan­ti­ta­tive data. Sub­stan­ti­at­ed infor­ma­tion about a prod­uct can sup­port the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, because, espe­cial­ly with­in the Busi­ness-to-Busi­ness sec­tor, ratio­nal deci­sions are still pri­mar­i­ly based on the num­bers. ‘There­fore, we have also com­piled envi­ron­men­tal data sheets that sum­marise the most rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion for our prod­ucts — among oth­er things, data from the EPDs as well. We want to embed the sus­tain­abil­i­ty men­tal­i­ty through­out the entire com­pa­ny, which is why every employ­ee is trained in the top­ic’, explained Cremer.

At the end of the work­shop, the new com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­u­al was intro­duced, which con­tains a vari­ety of back­ground infor­ma­tion and expert state­ments, and which mem­bers are expect­ed to sup­port with their own com­mu­ni­ca­tions work. ‘Sus­tain­able build­ing and the use of EPDs are com­plex top­ics. Instruct­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing about them is a real chal­lenge. I gath­ered a lot of sug­ges­tions at this work­shop as to how we can use EPDs in our com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and the IBU com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­u­al will be a big help to me’, said Heleen Blind­en­bah, QHSE Man­ag­er at Novoferm, sum­maris­ing her impres­sions. Ani­ta Kiet­z­mann, Coor­di­na­tor of Pub­lic Rela­tions at the IBU, was also very sat­is­fied with the event: ‘The intense dia­logue with our mem­bers is exact­ly what brings us forward’.

With approx­i­mate­ly 180 mem­ber com­pa­nies and asso­ci­a­tions from 17 coun­tries, and over 1,000 pub­lished dec­la­ra­tions, the IBU is Europe’s fore­most EPD pro­gram oper­a­tor. EPDs (envi­ron­men­tal prod­uct dec­la­ra­tions, Ger­man: Umwelt-Pro­duk­t­dekla­ra­tio­nen) are based on the inter­na­tion­al stan­dards ISO 14025 and EN 15804, and are suit­able for all build­ing-relat­ed prod­ucts and ser­vices. They describe poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal effects neu­tral­ly and trans­par­ent­ly, with­out eval­u­at­ing them. The infor­ma­tion they con­tain is based on a life cycle assess­ment and must be ver­i­fied by inde­pen­dent third par­ties. EPDs there­fore form an impor­tant basis for the eval­u­a­tion of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of build­ings on an envi­ron­men­tal level.

Cap­tion: Con­trib­u­tor Lau­ra Cre­mer reports on her expe­ri­ence with envi­ron­men­tal prod­uct dec­la­ra­tions at the Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ca­tions divi­sion at Interface.