Update of Environmental Product Declarations for Australian timberFriday 22 Apr 2016
The global sustainability consultancy thinkstep and Stephen Mitchell Associates have received funding to review and refresh the 10-year-old data. Representatives from Australian Solar Timber, the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia and Hyne Timber will oversee the project. In July 2015, five EPDs were registered with the Australasian EPD Programme and uploaded to the WoodSolutions website. “They are very successfully telling the ‘better than carbon neutral’ story for Australian softwood, hardwood, particleboard, MDF and plywood”, says Dr Chris Lafferty, R&D Manager of FWPA. “There have already been more than 1,100 downloads of the independently verified documents”. Under the Australasian EPD Programme rules, data used in EPDs cannot be older than 10 years. “At the moment, most of the information goes back to the 2005/06 production year and needs to be formally reviewed. Over 60 Australian timber product facilities have agreed to support this project and provide access to their manufacturing data” says Chris. “Our goal is to minimise the burden for these manufacturers”, says thinkstep’s Managing Director Barbara Nebel, “therefore we reviewed the information collected as part of the original CSRIO project almost a decade ago and identified hot spots where data needs to be updated and analysed. To streamline this process, a mixture of software assisted and on-site data gathering will be used.” “Over the last 10 years, there have been large improvements in efficiency which we are keen to capture as part of this update”, explains Stephen Mitchell from Stephen Mitchell Associates. “Each EPD needs to cover a minimum level of total production volume otherwise it risks being withdrawn. It is therefore crucial that we get a high level of industry support for this project across the softwood, hardwood, particleboard, MDF and plywood industries”. Australian timber product manufacturers who also would like to be listed as contributors on the Green Star compliant EPDs should contact steve@smassociates.com.au for further details. Photo: Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for 5 Australian Timber Product Groups have been downloaded over 1,100 times from WoodSolutions and Australian EPD websites | ||
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