Partnership between EPDItaly and Carbon Footprint Italy: reducing CO2 will be easier

In a historical period in which attention to CO2 emissions has been growing for several years, ICMQ is investing in finding methods and solutions that can meet the needs of a market that is increasingly attentive to sustainability issues.
We recall that a Ministry of ecological transition has recently been established, which includes zero CO2 mobility among its objectives, and above all that one of the seventeen sustainable development goals is “Acting for the climate”.
In this context, it becomes essential to help producers follow this policy and therefore enhance the efforts undertaken in this direction with an independent third party certification.
For this reason, a first step was the signing last May of a collaboration agreement between EPDItaly, the Italian Program Operator, and Carbon Footprint Italy, the Program Operator to communicate the quantification and reduction of GHG emissions (greenhouse gas ) of products and organizations.
The purpose of the agreement is to initiate a synergy between the two programs to facilitate the development of Product Category Rules (PCR) that can be used for the preparation of both EPD Environmental Product Declarations and CFP Product Carbon Footprints.
In this way, the PCRs to be used in the EPDItaly system will not only contain the indications for determining the environmental impact indicators typical of the EPD, but may contain the technical elements useful for calculating the CFP.
This process will allow to increase the technical level of EPDItaly documents, meeting, at the same time, the technical and communication needs of all producers.
EPDItaly and Carbon Footprint Italy will therefore share their skills through the committees they preside over and the publication of the PCR document to make it usable by both Program Operators and to provide it with that added value that represents a “plus” for the producer, from a perspective of the CO2 calculation.

The effectiveness of the certification
The PCR provides the manufacturer with the LCA “Life Cycle Assessment” methodology, which allows them to provide a methodology for analyzing their processes, from the “cradle to the grave”, that is, from the extraction of raw materials, to the disposal of the product, passing through the stages of production and use. The collection of data allows you to analyze these processes, capturing waste and consumption, allowing you to intervene on fuel supply, transport and suppliers, to optimize production and save on internal costs. Consumption and CO2 emissions can guide producers towards increasingly efficient systems and thus save on maintenance.
Last but not least, it must be considered that producers have a powerful communication and marketing tool at their disposal, after data collection. A third-party validation of the EPD and the CFP becomes an important tool for enhancing the environmental awareness of the producer and its investments in terms of energy saving, while communicating with the designers, orienting their choices on products that can make them acquire credits in major building and infrastructure rating systems such as Leed, Breeam, Itaca or Envision.