About EPD in Denmark - MVD-DK
An Environmental Product Declaration Programme is being established in Denmark in line with international guidelines and standards. Companies from other countries are welcome in our programme.
The programme will be launched in 2009. Over the next two years the programme will be developed and tested in up to 40 companies and among industrial associations and interested parties. This will be done in order to ensure that the programme from day one has participants and EPDs available for public and private purchasers and other interested parties.
The goal of the programme is to get new and uniform information available about the environmental performance of products especially for B2B communication.
With support from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, a consortium of consultants, industrial associations and companies will establish the programme.
Establishing the programme
The first task has been to set up the scope of the programme, responsibilities, general programme instructions and finding a way of involving interested parties. These procedures are now establish and are being tested.
The next task is to develop product category rules (PCRs), which are specific rules, requirements and guidelines for developing environmental product declarations. The PCRs are under development and the rules for the first 6 product groups will be ready mid 2006. These products groups are: electricity and heat, cargo transport, textiles, paper, furnitures and windows.
The programme will be voluntary and internationally oriented complying with the principles and procedures in ISO 14025:2006: Environmental labels and declarations - Type III environmental declarations - principles and procedures.
It also means that the consortium is closely following the related activities in the EU and that we will align our activities as far as possible.
EPDs covered by the Danish programme will be quantified environmental life cycle product information based on an independent verification of data, and presented as a set of environmental parameters.
The EPDs will be objective and will not contain any assessment of whether the product has a smaller or bigger impact on the environment. EPDs are therefore different from environmental labels and product claims. EPDs are thus a supplement to environmental labels and other environmental communication.
Further information from project manager Ninkie Bendtsen, EKJ Consulting Engineers Ltd. Tel: +45 33 11 14 14 or by e-mail nib@ekj.dk.