WASHINGTON – The American Wood Council (AWC) and California Redwood Association have announced the release of an environmental product declaration (EPD) for redwood decking.
This brings the available AWC EPDs for North American wood products to seven. All of these EPDs and the accompanying transparency briefs are available free on the AWC website.
EPDs are standardized tools that provide information about the environmental footprint of the products they cover. The North American wood products industry has taken its EPDs one step further by obtaining third-party verification from UL Environment, a business unit of Underwriters Laboratories and an independent certifier of products and their sustainable attributes.
“We are pleased to partner with the California Redwood Association to make this EPD available. With the growing interest by the design community to select products for which EPDs are available, we are confident the Redwood EPD will be popular” said AWC President and CEO Robert Glowinski.
“The California Redwood Association is glad to join the list of other North American wood products for which EPDs are available” said CRA President Charlie Jourdain. “This EPD is different, since it is based on a cradle-to-grave (C2G) life cycle assessment report. The findings represent the value of carbon sequestered by the product throughout its useful life and eventual end-of-life scenarios.”
Based on international standards (ISO 14025 and ISO 21930), EPDs have worldwide applicability and include information about product environmental impacts such as use of resources, global warming potential, emissions to air, soil and water, and waste generation.