News from Europe

The last General Assembly of Eco Platform, held remotely on November 24, 2020, was the harbinger of big news in the field of EPDs.
The ever increasing demand for environmental data of products to be used in the “building”, has led Eco Platform to play an increasingly central role on the international scene.
The most representative Program Operators, including EPDItaly, have outlined a scenario in which the digitization of EPDs is now a fundamental practice in the publication of EPDs. For this reason, Eco Platform has equipped itself with a tool, the Eco Portal, which publishes in digital format all the Eco EPDs published by the various Program Operators who have joined the initiative. This allows those who use the service to draw on a carnet of environmental data deriving from all over Europe.
The previous register of Eco EPDs has therefore been replaced by the Eco Portal which will henceforth represent a further enhancement, visible at international level, of the efforts made by producers for the development of an EPD. It will no longer be necessary for producers to request a registration number for the use of the Eco EPD logo, and their EPD will be visible on the Eco Portal, in the face of digitization operated by the Program Operator who published the EPD.
The Eco Portal allows, in fact, to connect the databases of the main Program Operators and also the national databases. The Eco Portal is connected to the web page of the Program Operator who has perfected the digitization. We remind you that, for EPDItaly, this page is located at https://www.epditaly.it/epd-digitalizzate/ in its Italian and English version.
EPDItaly has begun the transmigration of the Eco EPDs contained in the old register to the new Eco Portal, by digitizing the environmental data contained therein.
The implementation of the Eco Portal was made possible thanks to the collaboration with the Indata Group, in which EPDItaly was an active protagonist for the implementation of the ambitious digitization project.
The digitization carried out, through the Eco Portal, brings several advantages:
international visibility of the environmental data of a product;
significant reduction of the effort for data generation and communication;
sharing of data in a single format (ILCD + EPD);
common rules for the use of data, through exchange files in a standard format (xml and csv, at the moment);
future interaction, through special APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), with the main software for the development of the LCA of buildings;
possibility for the user to use a specific filter to identify: the language of the EPD, the country of origin, the manufacturer, the validity of the EPD, the Program Operator of origin and, above all, the type of data (specific or average ) to use.
This last option is very important for those wishing to use the data in the main building rating systems. In fact, since the LCA result is more accurate the more specific the data, the different protocols reward the use of specific data extrapolated from the EPD.
EPDItaly and its technicians are available to producers to provide them with all the information necessary for the development of an EPD.