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Beyond materials

An EPD is an independently third party-verified document that communicates precise, transparent and comparable information about the life-cycle environmental impacts of a product.

What is an Environmental Product Declaration ?

An EPD is a document whose content is defined and regulated according to international norms EN 15804 and ISO 14025 (for construction products). It's giving transparently the product's environmental impacts and it's third-party verified.

What are the different stages of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and which steps take into consideration ?

There are 5 different stages which compose the lifecycle of the product. For a human, it would be like dividing their life into several stages: birth, childhood, teen years, adulthood, end of life. 

Those stages are divided between different steps, also called “modules”.

PRODUCT STAGE : divided in 3 modules from A1 to A3

CONSTRUCTION STAGE : divided in 2 modules from A4 to A5

USE STAGE : from module B1 to B7

END OF LIFE STAGE : from module C1 to C4

BENEFITS AND LOADS BEYOND THE SYSTEM BOUNDARIES : module D

In our product EPD, modules from A5 to C2 (construction module and usage stage) are labeled as “MND” which stands for “Module Not Declared”. Indeed, these modules are out of our calculation scope because we don’t have precise and customize information on how our products will be assembled in the building or used during its usage phase. These missing data can be completed by architects and consultants to calculate the impacts of the building for its whole lifecycle.

Product stage, specifically “ raw material supply” (A1) account for around 35% of the total impact of the product. That's why, at SAPA, we focus on selecting the most sustainable and responsible materials.

That’s how we manage to get such good results for the product stage in our EPDs. Indeed, as our EPDs are dynamic and integrated in our quotation software we know exactly which materials are used in all our products and we work with all our supply chain to get the real impacts of their products or materials  instead of using general data inventories.

What is the importance to use dynamic EPD ?

In a dynamic EPD, you're able to fill in the exact dimensions and weight of the joinery component, and thus to automatically calculate the exact impact of this specific joinery. This is a huge difference compared to a "standard" EPD, based only on one dimension. 

With SAPA, the first joinery supplier to propose dynamic EPD on its software TechDesign, it's easy to evaluate the impact of your specific joinery.

We believe that to be truly sustainable, we must look to a world beyond four walls and work to make it a reality – starting today. That´s why we go beyond simply world-class low-carbon materials, to run every part of our business as sustainably as possible. SAPA has a holistic approach to sustainability and act within 3 main areas:

to reduce the carbon emission
in the use phase

to reduce the upfront and
embodied emissions

to see the
bigger picture