Environmental Product Declarations for Heraklith
Understanding the environmental impact of our entire wood wool products range through Life Cycle Assessment across all our plants, allowed us to quantify the benefit of using wood as a raw material, but also the impact of the binder. This LCA further strengthened the credentials of Wood Wool: for homogenous panels the sequestrated embodied carbon in the wood virtually offsets the carbon footprint of the binding agent used, whilst still considering the methane released at the end-of-life. Tektalan panels combined with rock mineral wool layer or Heratekta panels combined with EPS core generate environmental benefits over its lifetime, that are up to 50 times higher than the manufacturing impact.
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) is the standardized communication format for the environmental impact of construction products (Type III). EPDs are based on LCA results. Each EPD is specific to a product in a particular application, allowing for the first time proper comparison between the environmental impact of products.
LCA is a standardised method that compiles and evaluates inputs, outputs and potential environmental impacts of a product, system or building throughout its life cycle. Depending on the scope, LCA analyses everything from raw material extraction, through production, and up until the product leaves the factory gates (cradle-to-gate), or it can go beyond this and include the use phase until final recycling or disposal (cradle-to-grave). Unlike most green labels, LCA does not try to rate or judge environmental performance, but it characterises environmental impact through a series of standardised indicators. These, along with other important findings, help the 'eco-design' of our products through manufacturing improvements. Through LCA and energy performance calculation, we can quantify the huge benefit of the energy saved in the 'use' phase compared to the environmental impact from any other stage in the life cycle as part of manufacturing the product.
