Environmental Product Declarations : A Building Industry

Experience for Kingspan Insulated Panels

a 1
Dr. Mark G. Tatam , Jonas Bengsson b
a
Technical Manager Kingspan Insulated Panels, 38-52 Dunheved Circuit, St Marys, NSW 2760, Australia

b
Director Edge Environment Pty Ltd, 501/39 East Esplanade, Manly, NSW 2095, Australia

Abstract

Kingspan Insulated Panels has been publicly publishing its global sustainability performance
for the last six years as part of a Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to promote economic,
environmental and social sustainability. A key part of this has been the development of
environmental product declarations (EPDs) and labels for their insulated panels range. The
overall goal of publishing EPDs and labels is to encourage the demand for, and supply of,
those products that cause less impact on the environment, through communication of
verifiable and accurate information that is not misleading, thereby stimulating the potential
for market-driven continuous environmental improvement.

In 2011 Kingspan commissioned Edge Environment to conduct a LCA study of their range of
insulated panel products for roof, wall and controlled environment applications produced in
Australia, in order to establish rigorous environmental credentials for external
communications. The study was conducted in accordance with the Building Products Life
Cycle Inventory (BP LCI) methodology developed by Australian building product
manufacturers under the auspices of the Building Products Innovation Council (BPIC). The
study was peer-reviewed by PE International in the UK and the results published as a self-
declaration following the ISO 14025 format for Type III EPDs, in the absence of an
Australian or New Zealand EPD programme. The EPD of embodied performance in
combination with extensive energy modelling of whole building operational performance was
first published and presented at the GBCA Green Cities Conference in 2012.

This paper presents the Australian Kingspan business and its staff’s learning and
experiences from developing EPDs. It also describes the new challenges for Kingspan – for
example how EPDs are effectively communicated by Kingspan, and how they are interpreted
and used in the marketplace by green product leaders.

1
Corresponding author: T +61 (0)2 8889 3050 E-mail address: [email protected]

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Introduction
Today, building analysis and design is routinely broken down to the very product selection
level in a building project, and the selection of products can significantly contribute to
produce desired overall building project attributes. This can range from aesthetic finish,
building durability, energy efficiency, resilience in the face of certain building exposure risks,
and the environmental impact or footprint, as examples. An Environmental Product
Declaration (EPD) provides a way of reporting on environmental design credentials at a
building elemental level.

The EPD is a standardized (ISO 14025) report summarising content based on a Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA) for a product, and is used to communicate the environmental
performance of a product or system. It includes information about the environmental impacts
associated with products, such as the effects of acquiring and transporting raw materials,
manufacturing / production energy use, content of raw materials including chemical
substances and toxicology, as well as waste generation and emissions.

Over the period January 2007 to March 2011, the Australian building and construction
materials and products industries have been actively engaged in establishing the Building
Products Life Cycle Inventory (BP LCI) – a major project engaging every major product
sector to:

 agree a consistent, “Level Playing Field” Methodology for the compilation of life
cycle inventory data.
 compile generic average, representative life cycle inventory data for around 150
materials and products.
 agree consistent methods and data for life cycle impact assessment –
characterisation, normalisation and weighting.
 compile data on cleaning, maintenance and replacement life for different
materials, products, assemblies and buildings.
 conduct weighting workshops for a broad range of stakeholders to determine the
relative weighting that Australians would give to different environmental impacts.
 agree on a Protocol for the correct use of these resources.

The purpose of the BP LCI project was to improve the consistency and reliability of
environmental assessment for buildings in Australia, in the conduction of LCA studies and in
the development of life cycle based design tools, which serve to underpin the development
of EPD’s and Ecolabels.

Kingspan Insulated Panels is a global leader in the manufacture of sustainable building

products. After several years of working towards the development of formalising sustainable
product credentials for its Australian operation and its Australian made products, it
commissioned the consultancy firm Edge Environment to complete a LCA for each of its
products and develop EPD content. The LCA of Kingspan’s insulated panel products was
conducted using the best available life cycle data and ISO compliant methodologies arising
from the BP LCI project.

This paper summarises this work, raises key issues and challenges for both parties involved
both during the process, and after completion.

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The Life Cycle Assessment Process
Life cycle thinking is a core concept in sustainable building as it is directly linked to raw
material consumption and manufacturing production, and should be a key factor in business
decision making. Upstream and downstream consequences of decisions must be taken into
account to help avoid the shifting of burdens from one type of environmental impact to
another, from one political region to another, or from one stage to another in a product’s life
cycle from the cradle to the grave. LCA is a technique that enables industries to identify the
resource flows and environmental impacts (such as greenhouse gas emissions, water and
energy use) associated with the provision of products and services throughout its life cycle.
A typical product life cycle (greatly simplified) is shown in Figure 1 for Kingspan products.

Kingspan’s LCA calculates the environmental footprint at each stage of the supply chain,
manufacturing processes, product use and end of life. All the significant environmental
impacts associated with the product, including the impact on water, air, land and climate
change are reported based on international ISO LCA standards ISO 14040:2006 and
14044:2006 and the Building Products Life Cycle Inventory (BP LCI) methodology (BPIC,
2010a). This methodology has been developed by the Australian building product
manufacturers under the auspices of the Building Products Innovation Council (BPIC). The
methodology and resources are publicly available at http://www.bpic.asn.au/LCI.

Figure 1: Kingspan insulated panel system diagram (simplified)

Environmental Indicators
The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase of an LCA aims at describing the
environmental consequences of the environmental loads, which are quantified in the
inventory analysis. This is based on an audit and assessment of all aspects of the product
manufacturing process, and of course is very country specific – in this case Australia. The
impacts for all of the contributing inputs and outputs over the product life cycle are summed
to a total measure of impact measured in the units of individual potency factors. The

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following 12 midpoint environmental impact categories were used – as recommended for
impact assessment within the BP LCI project (Bengtsson and Howard, 2010a):

1. Global warming is the increase in the Earth’s average temperature. A common

outcome of this is an increase in natural disasters and sea level rise.
2. Resource depletion is the extraction of non-living and non-renewable natural
resources. These resources, such as fossil fuels and minerals, are an essential
resource in our everyday lives and most of them are currently being extracted at
an unsustainable rate.
3. Water use relates to depletion of this critical resource for the Australian
environment and economy. Most of Australia is classified as semi-arid or arid.
Australia is the third largest per capita user of water in the world.
4. Land transformation and use is the disturbance of the natural environment
through changes in land. A common outcome of this is loss in biodiversity and
life-supporting ecosystem functions.
5. Acidification is a process whereby pollutants are converted into acid substances,
which degrade the natural environment. Common outcomes of this are acid lakes
and rivers, toxic metal leaching, forest damage and accelerated corrosion of
metals, concrete structures and limestone.
6. Eutrophication is an increase in the levels of nutrients (especially phosphates,
nitrates and chlorates) in the environment. A common outcome of this is high
biological productivity that can lead to oxygen depletion, as well as significant
impacts on water quality, affecting all forms of aquatic and plant life.
7. Eco-toxicity is the release of toxic substances into freshwater, marine and
terrestrial ecosystems
8. Photochemical smog is a type of air pollution that is caused by a reaction
between sunlight, nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This is
a known cause for respiratory health problems and damage to vegetation and
smog.
9. Ozone depletion is the decline in the total volume of ozone in the Earth’s
stratosphere. The depletion of the ozone layer increases the amount of UVB that
reaches the Earth’s surface. UVB is generally accepted to be a contributing factor
to skin cancer, cataracts and a decrease in crops and plankton yield.
10. Ionising radiation is the release of radioactive substances and/or direct exposure
to radiation. A possible outcome of this is harmful health impacts to both humans
and animals.
11. Human toxicity is the emission of certain substances that are harmful to human
health. A possible outcome of this in Australia is related to the inhalation of toxic
metals.
12. Respiratory effects represent the effects from release of compounds that are
harmful to the human respiratory system. Major contributing factors are dust,
carbon monoxide and VOCs.
The second step of the LCIA is to normalize the environmental impacts against the annual
average per capita impact or consumption of an Australian citizen. For the Kingspan study
Edge Environment have normalised the information using the total Australian impacts
(around year 2008) divided by the population (See Bengtsson and Howard, 2010b).These
units, although dimensionless, are expressed as a percentage of the population.

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 Midpoint impact categories

Global warming

Abiotic resource depletion

(minerals and fossil fuel)

Land transformation and

occupation N
Water consumption
O
R W
Eutrophication M E
A I
Acidification L G
Single Score
LCI Results
Eco-toxicty
I H Ecopoints
(freshwater, marine and terrestrial)
S T
Photochemical smog
A I
T N
Ozone depletion I G
O
Ionizing radiation
N
Human toxicity

Respiratory effects

Figure 2: Illustration of the ecopoint metric

The third and final step of the LCIA is to combine the normalised impacts, weighted for their
relative importance. This stage uses weighting factors, which take account of stakeholders’
opinions about the relative importance of the different impact categories. The process is
illustrated in Figure 2. The weighting factors, developed for the BP LCI (Howard et al.,
2010), are used to convert the LCA results into ecopoint scores. This work has also been
extended to the New Zealand market, again using weighting factors sourced for that
population / market.

Environmental Product Information

Environmental label and declaration principles and processes are defined and governed by
standards issued by the International Standards Organisation (ISO). In particular the
following standards are pertinent to EPD’s:

 ISO 14020:2000 Environmental Labels and declarations – General principles.

 ISO 14021:1999 Environmental Labels and Declarations – Self-Declared
Environmental Claims (Type II environmental labelling).
 ISO 14024:1999 Environmental labels and declarations -- Type I environmental
labelling -- Principles and procedures
 ISO 14025:2006 Environmental Labels and Declarations – Type III environmental
declarations - Principles and procedures.
 ISO 14040:2006 Environmental management -- Life cycle assessment -- Principles
and framework.
 ISO 14044:2006 Environmental management -- Life cycle assessment --
Requirements and guidelines.

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These standards require that specific product standards be developed, and also that EPD
standards need to be tailored to the environmental conditions and impacts of the country in
which they will be used.

In particular, Type III environmental declarations aim to:

 provide LCA-based information and additional information on the environmental

aspects of products.
 assist purchasers and users to make informed comparisons between products; these
declarations are not comparative assertions.
 encourage improvement of environmental performance.
 provide information for assessing the environmental impacts of products over their
life cycle.

Key Environmental Objectives and the Drive for Continuous

Improvement
Kingspan Insulated Panels has adopted a sustainability reporting framework – the Global
Reporting Initiative (GRI) and reports publicly on its performance on an annual basis. This
framework sets out the principles and objectives that organisations can use to measure and
report on as a measure of their economic, environmental and social performance.

As part of this reporting structure, long term performance targets or key performance goals
(reviewed annually) have been put in place by Kingspan Insulated Panels to cover

 Sustainable Product Stewardship: Ensure sustainability is considered in the design

and manufacture, and promoted in the installation, use and disposal of Kingspan
Insulated Panel’s products and services.
 Carbon Management: Measure and actively reduce Kingspan Insulated Panels’
carbon footprint with the long-term aim of going beyond carbon neutrality.
 Optimise Use of Resources: Minimise waste, harmful emissions and water usage
associated with the manufacture, distribution and, where possible, the end-of-life
management of Kingspan Insulated Panel’s products and services.
 Sustainable Building Design: Consider best practice sustainable building design
when constructing or refurbishing Kingspan Insulated Panels manufacturing facilities,
and ensure the sustainable management of all sites used by Kingspan Insulated
Panels.
 Ethical Procurement & Supply Chain Management: Develop an ethical procurement
strategy for procuring materials and services. Engage with prioritised suppliers and
contractors to ensure that they operate to similar sustainability standards, and seek
to build long-term relationships with key suppliers and contractors.
 Stakeholder Engagement: Engage key stakeholders in Kingspan Insulated Panels
Sustainability Strategy and ensure employees are fully involved in helping deliver the
Sustainability Policy.
 Social Responsibility: Support Kingspan Insulated Panels employees and uphold its
corporate social responsibility with the communities in which it does business.

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LCAs, EPDs and Sustainable Products
As a building project moves from a conceptual phase to actualisation, a multitude of
decisions around materials specification and building services come into consideration.
These decisions are driven by factors such as cost and availability, customer support,
product / brand reputation, Australian made, non-toxic, recyclable, and low embodied energy
as examples. Products in general need to have multiple attributes to gain acceptance and
success in a business environment.

Today there are also more practical and holistic views for building projects that need to be
taken into consideration – building resilience, resistance to climate change, meeting both
current and future building code regulations, and being a desirable building both now, and in
perhaps forty years time. These factors affect critical business factors such as investment
return, long term property value, tenantability, operating and maintenance costs, and worker
productivity as examples. It is not just the building design, but also the selection of products
used to make the building that can have a profound affect on the life of the building.

The processes for building product manufacturers in developing LCA and EPDs can actually
impact on some of these factors. For example :

 It necessitates the ongoing measurement of key business critical items such as

waste quantification, energy measurement, and resource efficiency. It short it
provides base data for processes of continuous improvement, monitoring ongoing
resource efficiency, energy efficiency, and cost efficiencies.
 Attention to waste disposal and waste management leads towards a focus on
product stewardship policies, improved waste disposal, reuse of materials at end of
life, and recycling of waste materials.
 Manufacturers are generally seen as more environmentally conscious, and more
likely to have sustainable business practices in place – ie not just manufacture
sustainable products. Companies as a rule are more likely to deal with product
suppliers that are going to be around for some time, and are likely to produce
consistent quality products.
 Buildings that are designed around LCA/EPDs and the use of sustainable building
products could lead to better performance throughout their life cycle.

Figure 3: Typical weighted environmental impact for Kingspan cradle to grave in its
Australian manufacturing process for roof, wall and controlled environment products

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Kingspan Insulated Panels has identified the environmental impact from cradle to grave, as
illustrated in Figure 3 in the form of a one-page summary of the full environmental
declaration (available on Kingspan Insulated Panels website). The majority of the impact
comes from raw materials, and this information provides an opportunity for the development
of operational improvement initiatives designed to reduce the carbon footprint of products, by
focusing on the raw material use and supply chain. For example there are significant gains
to be made in raw material selection and procurement, by investigating sources for lower
impact steels, and working with suppliers to develop lower environmental impact product
choices.

There is a lack of a consistent environmental reporting in the building industry which makes
the comparison of different products for building designers extremely difficult. Basically all
product manufacturers can report on LCAs (if they have them), and make their own
environmental claims or statements based on this. In ISO language claims would fall under
the category Self-Declared Environmental Claims (Type II environmental labeling).

Figure 4: Sample one-page summary of Kingspan’s EPD (extracted from the full EPD).

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Kingspan and Edge Evironment have gone beyond this, in not only retaining the ISO
compliant standardised reporting structure, but having the assessments reviewed by an
independent third party, in this case PE International. Although this is not fully ISO 14025
compliant as there are no market and product specific Product Category Rules (PCRs) or
verification bodies available, the scope and content of the reports are produced to be
compatible with an ISO 14025 Type III product declaration format.

The Post LCA / EPD Scenario

Kingspan Insulated Panels has completed the development of LCAs and EPDs for its
products. A sample one page summary is shown in Figure 4, which has been extracted from
the full EPD. The full EPD also references the thermal performance functional unit of ‘R-
value’, in accordance with the BPIC methodology. The development of these programs and
prerequisite collection of manufacturing data has facilitated the adoption of ongoing
initiatives in waste reduction at the Kingspan manufacturing site in New South Wales. This
has included separation of waste at earlier stages in the waste stream, looking at new
opportunities for product re-use, and manufacturing initiatives to minimise the waste
generated in the manufacturing of each of its products.

The Kingspan Group of companies (which includes Kingspan Insulated Panels) is adopting
LCA initiatives at a global level both within the Insulated Panels division and also other
divisions. Kingspan Insulated Panels has well established programs in the UK and USA, for
example.

Although the LCA and EPD programs in Australia have been widely viewed as a success, it
has also made apparent a few issues.

 It is not clear how they are used in the marketplace. They are routinely published in
literature and provided to customers as a matter of due course - as a measure of
environmental impact for each product. However, what they are also used for by
Kingspan is part of an internal continuous improvement process. Kingspan is looking
at repeating the LCA assessment on a regular basis, as a check-step to verify that
business environmental improvement is actually taking place, and that business key
performance environmental objectives are correct.
 Market education is required to understand what they generally mean. LCAs and
EPDs are relatively new in the market place, and there is not a clear understanding
of this (especially in comparison with other products), except to a small minority of
sustainability experts. Therefore education of the building industry to some extent
falls back on those building manufacturers that do have these credentials, to explain
them to the marketplace, and why they should be important to customers. To date
Kingspan has gone some way towards this, with its annual sustainability reports,
establishing and reporting on environmental targets, and producing simplified and
structured ISO 14040 / 14044 compliant EPD reports.
 ISO 14025 compliant EPDs should be based upon an established set of PCRs which
can be independently verified from life cycle assessment data. This allows for a
comparison of impacts across products in specified building products or services
categories, and is what is currently lacking in the Australian building landscape.
 Environmental credentials are constantly changing. New technologies are constantly
being developed to complement current practices in creating greener buildings, with
the common objective of reducing the impact of and more efficiently using raw
material resources, reducing waste and environmental pollution, and using less
energy in the manufacturing of products – from cradle to grave. Other positive
benefits include protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity. The

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 the importance of continuous improvement processes adopted by Kingspan using
environmental key performance indicators then becomes clear.
 Green labeling as a method of improved market communication. A step further
towards a better market understanding of the value of LCA is with independent third
party product assessment. Kingspan is currently completing the development of
green label credentials - as fully independent and assessed ISO 14024 Type I eco-
labels.

Kingspan specifically had a few issues with the process. The major problem was that the
process to develop LCA/EPDs was far too long (1-2 years). This was predominantly due to
the process of data collection, and getting the right data. A number of Kingspan raw
materials were sourced from South East Asia, and delays in getting available data were in
some cases significant. The BPIC methodology does explain how to deal with this using
conservative estimates based on available analogous process data, although early on in the
process a good deal of time was spent in trying to verify and improve the precision in the
(limited) data that was obtained.

The other issue was that some suppliers were a lot easier to deal with than others, in terms
of data collection. There are confidentiality issues often surrounding this data, and although
they did not admit it, it was clear that some suppliers were not all that keen to be forthcoming
with their data. The response time of suppliers varied significantly, and this effectively puts
the speed of the process in the hands of product suppliers. However, having now completed
the process, Kingspan is in a much better position in that it can select suppliers that have
readily available data, and we now see this as a means of driving the market forward.

The Future - Efficiency in Use

In the selection of products for building construction, products which have LCA / EPDs will
rarely be selected on this criteria alone, and it will need to be a part of a total value
proposition for the building owner or purchasers of building materials.

A building which is considered ‘sustainable’ can be seen as a structure using products /

processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a
building's life-cycle from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation,
and demolition. The embodied impacts in products and materials can have a significant role
in realising sustainable buildings, but it is not the whole story. Embodied measurements
often exclude any in-use components that may impact on the building throughout it’s life. For
different products and services this in-use component can mean different things, and could
(or could not) be seen as providing a meaningful contribution to the environment in-use,
throughout its life span.

Kinspan’s products have several key attributes – namely long life span, consistent
performance over the life of its products, and high energy efficiency. These factors all
contribute to an effective value proposition for the building industry in terms of product
selection. The Kingspan roof, wall and controlled environment products are energy efficient
‘in-use’, so it also seems practical to investigate not only the embodied energy in these
building products, but the in-use energy savings as well. With the building industry looking
more and more towards long life performing products, the energy savings over the life of the
building can in some cases dwarf the embodied energy in its carbon footprint. This is viewed
as the energy saved in operation over the life of the building by the use of less energy, as
compared to ‘typical’ building products. Kingspan not only guarantees the thermal
performance of its products over the lifespan of each product, but is quantifying the energy
saved through the use of its products over the life of the building.

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Kingspan Insulated Panels is committed to the development of net-zero energy building
solutions, and energy modeling currently in development is examining the best ways of
achieving these building energy use outcomes. It is also developing complementary solar
and other renewable energy solutions to complement its thermally efficient building products.

In summary, LCA and EPDs are invaluable in promoting the carbon footprint of products.
They are also invaluable as part of a continuous improvement program based around key
internal business processes, which are associated with environmental performance and will
impact on business viability and profitability. For Kingspan Insulated Panels, the combination
of EPD and LCA data in conjunction with a detailed assessment of the in-use performance of
its building products forms a total picture of their performance over the life of a building.

References

1 Australian Life Cycle Inventory Database Initiative (AusLCI), 2009, Guidelines for Data
Development for an Australian Life Cycle Inventory Database, Draft Standard, June 28th
2009
2 Bengtsson J. and Howard N., 2010a. A Life Cycle Impact Assessment Part 1:
Classification and Characterisation, Building Products Life Cycle Inventory.
http://www.bpic.asn.au/LCIMethodology.htm [last viewed 03/03/2011]
3 Bengtsson J. and Howard N., 2010b. A Life Cycle Impact Assessment Part 2:
Normalisation, Building Products Life Cycle Inventory.
http://www.bpic.asn.au/LCIMethodology.htm [last viewed 03/03/2011]
4 Building Products Innovation Council (BPIC), 2010a, Methodology Guidelines for the
Materials and Building Products Life Cycle Inventory Database,
http://www.bpic.asn.au/LCIMethodology.htm [last viewed 17 July 2011]
5 Building Products Innovation Council (BPIC), 2010b, Protocol for the Correct Use of
Australian Life Cycle Inventory Data for Building and Construction Materials and
Products, http://www.bpic.asn.au/LCIMethodology.htm [last viewed 17 July 2011]
6 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 2006a Environmental labels and
declarations — Type III environmental declarations — Principles and procedures. ISO
14025:2006; Geneva, CH.
7 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 2006b International Organization for
Standardization - Environmental management - Life cycle assessment – Principles and
Framework. ISO 14040:2006; Second Edition 2006-06, Geneva, CH.
8 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 2006c International Organization for
Standardization - Environmental management - Life cycle assessment – Requirements
and Guidelines. ISO 14044:2006; Second Edition 2006-06, Geneva, CH.
9 Howard N., Bengtsson J. and Kneppers B., 2010. Weighting of Environmental Impacts
in Australia. Building Products Life Cycle Inventory,
http://www.bpic.asn.au/LCIMethodology.htm [last viewed 03/03/2011]

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