Why EPDs Matter to Us
By Charles Griffin
For over 70 years, Carnegie has proven that beautiful, elegant, high performance solutions can be delivered sustainably. As the nation’s only B-Corp certified textile manufacturer and forever PVC-free company, we embrace sustainable business practices and hold ourselves accountable by providing Health Product Declarations for every product we bring to market, and seeking third-party verifications for our product claims.
Guided by a strong sense of social responsibility, we strive to continue improving our environmental transparency by bringing forth our third-party verified Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for Biobased Xorel® in accordance with the international EPD system. Our Biobased Xorel material has an embodied carbon footprint of 1.12 kg carbon dioxide (CO2) per yard. We are beyond excited to share this data after years of thorough analysis and measuring, providing you with a scientific metric to obtain credits for green building certifications.
According to the international EPD system, an Environmental Product Declaration “transparently reports objective, comparable and third-party verified data about products and services’ environmental performances from a lifecycle perspective.” In order to receive an EPD, a life cycle assessment (LCA) must also be performed, reviewing the “full value chain, from material-extraction to manufactured product, it’s usage stage and end of life.”
Now more than ever, healthier building materials with emphasis on embodied carbon is imperative as industry-leading firms pave the way to transform sustainability in interior design. HOK’s Interiors group leads by example by setting stringent internal criteria for material health such as having EPDs and other third-party certifications.
With CALGreen going into effect by July 2024, Metropolis reminds us of the immense standards designers in California must consider in order to regulate embodied carbon emission control as a mandatory part of the building code. LMN Architects conducted research indicating that interior designers may also be responsible for emissions at least equal to those associated with the structure and envelope of a building.
By leveraging interior materials to reduce the overall amount of embodied carbon in buildings, designers can make a huge difference in creating beautiful, lasting spaces that are healthy for people and the planet. With the understanding that our decisions have consequences, we strive to make better choices for the triple bottom line. We will never settle on our quest to develop materials that are ever more beautiful, durable, and sustainable; materials that matter.
About the Author
Charles Griffin is the Director of Product Integrity and Quality at Carnegie. As a leader in sustainability, Charles brings technical expertise and data-driven critical thinking to drive Carnegie’s relentless innovation in environmental stewardship forward through third-party verifications and testing.