Prod­uct-relat­ed sus­tain­abil­i­ty information

Build­ing on the suc­cess of recent years, the Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) plans to expand its service area in 2019. In addi­tion to the estab­lished and inter­na­tion­al­ly suc­cess­ful EPD sys­tem for build­ing-relat­ed prod­ucts, going for­ward, the insti­tute intends to pre­pare prod­uct-relat­ed sus­tain­abil­i­ty infor­ma­tion in line with the require­ments of nation­al and inter­na­tion­al build­ing assess­ment systems.

With its EPD online tool, the IBU already pro­vides detailed envi­ron­men­tal and health-relat­ed infor­ma­tion on build­ing prod­ucts and com­po­nents as well as base mate­ri­als and pre­lim­i­nary prod­ucts in the form of Envi­ron­men­tal Prod­uct Dec­la­ra­tions (EPD). These dec­la­ra­tions form the basis for the “eco­log­i­cal pil­lar” in the sus­tain­abil­i­ty assess­ment of build­ings. The EPD online tool does not include a detailed eval­u­a­tion of the infor­ma­tion or even an assess­ment or cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the prod­ucts from a sus­tain­abil­i­ty aspect.

The new prod­uct infor­ma­tion sys­tem is intend­ed to col­late prod­uct data, which can sub­se­quent­ly be exam­ined by sus­tain­abil­i­ty eval­u­a­tion sys­tems dur­ing an audit accord­ing to their cat­a­logue of cri­te­ria. The data from the build­ing prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers is used for the pur­pos­es of record­ing, eval­u­a­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as spec­i­fied by the var­i­ous assess­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems for sus­tain­able con­struc­tion, includ­ing DGNB, BNB and LEED. This will enable the IBU to pro­vide plan­ners and audi­tors with prod­uct-relat­ed data that goes beyond the LCA information.