Lca Plaquette

Environmental Profiles

Certification of environmental profiles: life-cycle assessment of construction products Claims about the environmental performance of building products are easy to make, but difficult to substantiate without a universal measuring system. Certificated Environmental Profiles provide that measurement and enable manufacturers to independently demonstrate the performance of their products. They also help clients, designers and specifiers to identify products that will best fulfil a sustainability brief. As well as underpinning claims of environmental performance, certificated Environmental Profiles enable manufacturers to compare their products against others, demonstrate improvements that have been made and help raise general awareness of life cycle issues. Do Environmental Profiles relate to the full life cycle? Environmental Profiles measure environmental performance throughout a product’s life:

Profiles provide key indicators of environmental sustainability: • Climate change – from CO2 and other greenhouse gases especially associated with energy use

• in manufacture (including impacts from virgin and recycled inputs)

• Ozone depletion – from gases affecting the ozone layer

• in use in a building (taken over a typical building life and including maintenance and replacement)

• Acidification – contribution to the formation of acid rain

• in demolition (the waste produced, allowing for recycling and reuse).

• Emission of pollutants to air and water – including toxicity to humans and ecosystems

• Consumption of minerals and water

• Quantity of waste sent to disposal • Ecopoint rating – a single measure of overall impact*.

Profiling individual materials, components and building elements At its simplest level the profiling method is able to consider the impacts of a single building product, such as brick. However, to make valid comparisons designers need information about a building element, for example a wall. A building element is likely to be made up of several products and Environmental Profiling takes this into account by adding together the contribution of the component parts. This allows specifiers to compare one type of element with another.

Certification of environmental profiles: life-cycle assessment of construction products

Credibility Certificated Environmental Profiles are reviewed and verified on an annual basis to ensure that information is both valid and up-to-date, and are recalculated every three years. An Environmental Profile certificated by BRE Certification is prepared according to Scheme Document SD028. For further information about BRE: Methodology BRE Garston The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology** used for Environmental Profiles has been Watford peer reviewed and complies with ISO14041, an internationally established approach for WD25 9XX analysing environmental T + 44 (0)the 1923 664000 impacts of products and processes. The system fits well with the environmental management principles. BRE devised the methodology in F + ISO14001 44 (0) 1923 664010 E [email protected] partnership with Government and 24 Trade Associations from the construction products www.bre.co.uk sector to provide a single, consistent approach for applying LCA to all types of construction products. Benefits of certificated Environmental Profiles • Improved processes • Education in energy usage • Reductions in emissions and CO2 • Benchmarking • Green Guide rating • Independent LCA certification Red Book listing All certificated Environmental Profiles are listed in the Red Book Volume 2, which can be viewed online at www.redbooklive.com. Details are updated twice a month. The Red Book is a specifiers’ guide and is used by architects, clients, users, regulators, specifiers and insurers to identify suitable construction products. In addition, companies with certificated Environmental Profiles can use the data to see how their products perform against the ratings in BRE’s ‘The Green Guide to Specification’, which links construction products to BREEAM (the environmental assessment method for buildings). In the domestic sector, ‘The Green Guide to Housing Specification’ links products to EcoHomes (the BREEAM rating for homes).

*

Ecopoints In order to make environmental data easy to use, BRE devised a method of ranking and scoring different environmental impacts. Ecopoints are based upon: • an individual’s share of the total UK impact for the main environmental issues (100 Ecopoints equal the impact of one person in the UK for one year) • a weightings exercise involving consultation with representatives of the construction industry (including government, lobbyists and manufacturers) to enable the different issues to be ranked. More detailed information is available in BRE Digest 446, available from www.brebookshop.com.

** BRE Methodology for Environmental Profiles of construction materials, components and buildings. BRE Report BR370, available from www. brebookshop.com.

Further information If you are interested in certification of your products for Environmental Profiling, and would like to receive further information or an application form, please call BRE Certification: T 01923 664100 F 01923 664994 E [email protected] www.brecertification.co.uk BRE Certification is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Foundation of the Built Environment (FBE) and is a sister company to BRE. If you would like information on the materials and components registered on BRE’s Environmental Profile Database please visit our website at www.bre.co.uk/envprofiles where current data can be viewed via an internet subscription service.