Environmental Profiles

Claims about the environmental performance of building products are easy to make but difficult to substantiate without a transparent measuring system.

Environmental profiles measure the impacts of a construction material, product or building system throughout its life – not only during its manufacture, but also its use in a building over a typical building lifetime. This includes its extraction, processing, use and maintenance and its eventual disposal.

The Environmental Profiles Methodology assesses environmental indicators that reflect impacts occurring globally, regionally and locally - in the air, in water and on the land, impacting humans and the environment. These impacts are assessed under a range of issue categories and normalised by reference to European data. They are weighted to generate a measure of environmental impact as a proportion of the annual impact of a European citizen.

Why certify?

Manufacturers benefit from certification by being able to positively distinguish their products from the competition in a way that purchasers will recognise and accept. Certification also provides performance benchmarks, a greater understanding of supply chain impacts, and the opportunity to identify and correct inefficiencies and environmental impact ‘hotspots’.

Specifiers and designers benefit by being able to cut through the confusion of claims and counter claims about green credentials. They can confidently select materials, products and systems in the knowledge that their environmental performance will be as specified.

Benefits of Certified Environmental Profiles

Certified Environmental Profiles give you :

Independent third party certification
An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) which contains more information which your clients may need to know
An Ecopoint score
A Green Guide rating (if applicable)
An Environmental Profiles Report which gives a focus for improvement
A listing here on GreenBookLive
Product differentiation and competitive advantage
Credibility for your product and ameans to cut through green claims and counter claims

The Process

The manufacturer supplies information about the factory and the manufacturing process. This information is reviewed by BRE Global and verified with a site audit. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) modelling to derive the environmental profile then takes around ten weeks. On completion of the profiling, a client obtains a Certificate, a Certified Environmental Profile, a Green Guide rating (if the product type is covered in the Guide), and a report of the assessment findings.