The Institut Bauen und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) is currently the most successful cooperation in the construction sector when it comes to quality-assured life cycle assessment data for construction products. 400 national and international manufacturers and construction trade associations are committed to ensuring that environmental product declarations (EPDs) are publicly available as a transparent, verifiable, and comparable data basis. In Germany, specific, average, or generic EPD data can be used or derived for almost all construction products.
The roots of this development date back to the late 1970s, when the first environmental and health statements on building products were published, but were still hardly reliable. Based on the conviction that sustainable construction must be based on verifiable and generally accepted statements, the working group “Environmentally Compatible Building Products AUB” was founded in 1980. With expert knowledge and verified by an independent quality committee, product data sheets were developed – a Type II eco-label.
With the introduction of ISO standardization for life cycle assessments in the 1990s, this developed into a scientifically sound and market-oriented set of rules for almost all product categories in the construction sector. By the turn of the millennium, an EPD program had been established which, as a Type III eco-label, ensures independent calculation and verification, comparability, and transparent control and further development mechanisms.
The first EPD transfers in 2004 marked the transition from a pioneering project to an established procedure and led to the renaming of the institute as Institut Bauen und Umwelt (IBU). Today, a large proportion of the individual data sets in ÖKOBAUDAT originate from the IBU program. With a view to the new requirements of the EU Construction Products Regulation (CPR), the IBU is currently undergoing further restructuring. The spin-off of IBU Verify GmbH and the planned accreditation process with DAkkS are key steps toward ensuring the quality and reliability of life cycle assessment values in the future.
This development is driven by IBU members, who have been consciously opting for transparency, quality, verifiable data, and common rules in sustainable construction for decades.