Many countries around Europe are developing there own systems for declaring the environmental impacts of construction products. Most of these are ask for data in a way that is specific to that country and local manufacturers are asked to contribute data. This has lead to discrepancies between the data being used under different system. ERFMI therefore took the lead by drawing together all its members to provide data for an EU wide Life Cycle Assessment of a broad range of flooring types and specifications. From this study, carried out by PE International in cooperation with ERFMI and its individual members, a series of Environmental Product Declarations have been produced.

Product declarations from ERFMI

An EPD, or Environmental Product Declaration, is an independently reviewed assessment of a product’s environmental impact. Understanding these values are often critical to a building’s overall environmental impact assessment and can be used to contribute to green building schemes.

As European systems and their approach to data analysis vary from country to country, discrepancies can occur between EPDs. ERFMI therefore has developed an EU wide Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA, of a broad range of resilient flooring types.

We have produced EPDs in cooperation with our members, in order to support a transparent comparison tool for both users and manufacturers.

Methodology

SPHERA in cooperation with ERFMI and its individual members, carried out a study of nine general flooring types to produce series of Environmental Product Declarations. Weighted average data on raw materials, energy types and their consumption, plus outputs, emissions and wastage rates provided by an independent third party gives us an LCA for each product type. The results for each impact category provides the data used through our website.

We have calculated the impact of flooring through two categories of its service life.
Firstly, the manufacture and installation, and secondly the maintenance of the floor product throughout its lifetime.

The frequency at which the flooring is changed and the methods of maintenance undertaken by specifier and building owner, have a far greater effect on the overall impacts than the choice of flooring.

Data sources

Specific data on weights, formulations, construction and energy usage for product production has been supplied by individual manufacturers. The majority of background data is obtained from the GaBi database. The EPDs have been created using the European Standard EN15804.