This report reviews life cycle assessment (LCA) based regulatory approaches that have been adopted in several countries to evaluate and improve environmental impacts of cosntruction products and buildings. Recommendations are provided for incorporating LCA into Canadian regulations (including the National Building Code of Canada), and for enhancing building LCA guidelines to address principles of consistency, simplicity, and representative data which can improve the effectiveness of LCA to achieve regulatory objectives. This work supports the project need of guidance for performance-based design to accelerate the introduction of wood-based systems. The findings of this review can be used to help accelerate the adoption of life cycle-based regulations for buildings and infrastructure in Canada.
FPInnovations commissioned the Athena Institute to develop a biogenic carbon calculation tool for use
in Environmental Product Declarations, EPD’s, developed under their Product Category Rules, PCR, for
North American wood products. Athena has developed two such tools to supplement two types of LCA
studies.
Cradle-to-gate: Cradle-to-gate LCA refers to those that begin in the forest “cradle” and end with the
packaged product at the manufacturing “gate”. Business-to-business, B2B, EPD’s are developed form
cradle-to-gate LCAs.
Cradle-to-grave: Cradle-to-grave LCA includes the cradle-to-gate processes as well as the transportation
to user, end-use, and end-of-life treatment or “grave”. Business to Consumer, B2C, EPD’s are developed
from cradle-to-grave LCAs.
This primer introduces forestry and other professionals to current carbon offset methodologies and presents examples of guidelines for emission reduction and carbon offset activities that forest operations in Canada can implement. It also contains numerous references to carbon emission information.
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Le présent document offre aux forestiers et autres professionnels une introduction aux méthodologies actuelles en matière de compensation de carbone et donne des exemples de lignes directrices pour les activités de réduction des émissions et de compensation de carbone qu’on peut appliquer dans les opérations forestières au Canada. Il contient aussi de nombreuses références pour de l’information sur les émissions de carbone.
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The intended application of this product category rules (PCR) document is to provide a common set of specific rules, requirements and guidelines for developing ISO 14025 conformance Type III environmental product declarations (EPDs) for North American (NA) produced gypsum board products and to specify the underlying requirements of the Life cycle assessment (LCA) in conformance with The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 series of LCA standards.
The primary users of this PCR will be the Gypsum Association (GA) and its member companies. Other NA gypsum board manufacturers could use this PCR as well.
The objective of this program is to establish and implement the necessary process(es) for developing credible, comparable and consistent EPDs, for both Business to Business (B-to-B) applications and Business to Consumer (B-to-C) communications. The EPDs will be intended to assist purchasers and users to make informed comparisons between products, however they will not represent environmental claims regarding the superiority or equivalence of one product versus a competing product that performs the same function. This version replaces January 2011 version.
This calculator is intended as a companion to the Product Category Rules for North American Structural and Architectural Wood Prodcuts. It serves to simplify and standardize the approach to biogenic carbon accounting when developing EPDs according to that PCR. This tool comes in two versions: one for use with cradle-to-grave LCA data (the B2C tool) and one for use with cradle-to-gate LCA data (the B2B tool)
This calculator is intended as a companion to the Product Category Rules for North American Structural and Architectural Wood Prodcuts. It serves to simplify and standardize the approach to biogenic carbon accounting when developing EPDs according to that PCR. This tool comes in two versions: one for use with cradle-to-grave LCA data (the B2C tool) and one for use with cradle-to-gate LCA data (the B2B tool)
This study presents a cradle-to-grave environmental profile for pre-finished hardwood flooring manufactured in eastern Canada and compares this to profiles for alternative flooring products such as carpets, ceramic tiles, vinyl, cork, and linoleum flooring. This is a life cycle assessment (LCA) study.
Study Goals
Conduct a cradle-to-grave LCA for eastern Canadian hardwood flooring in a typical residential application;
Create cradle-to-grave profiles for alternative flooring products for which existing LCA was available (carpets, ceramic tiles, vinyl, cork , and linoleum flooring) and their use in typical residential applications;
Compare and contrast life cycle environmental impact of eastern Canadian hardwood flooring with alternative flooring types (carpets, ceramic tiles, vinyl, cork flooring, and linoleum) used in residential applications.
This report discusses eco-labeling and the rise in interest of environmental product declarations (EPDs). EPDs are ISO Type III labels conveying non-judgemental life cycle assessment (LCA)-based environmental performance data about products. These documents work in principle like nutrition labels on food packages, transparently disclosing standardized data about the contents and enabling side-by-side comparison between products. EPDs are a user-friendly vehicle for bringing LCA data to the marketplace. In Europe and Asia, EPD development is on the rise, and some jurisdictions are moving towards making EPDs mandatory; this may have trade implications for Canadian exporters. Meanwhile, North America has been slow to follow this trend, although there is movement in the US towards development of standards. It is in the best interests of the wood products industry to accelerate North American activity in EPDs and position itself as a leader in industrial sustainability by developing EPDs early. Over two decades of work in LCA by the wood industry has already indicated that environmental metrics for wood products are generally better than those for competing products. In this report, EPDs are explained in terms of applications, benefits, risks and market drivers. We discuss how EPDs are created and identify global activity in EPD development and creation of national infrastructures. We address trade implications, assess Canada’s readiness, and provide recommendations for moving more quickly to bring the potential benefit of EPDs to the Canadian wood products sector.
This EPD addresses products from multiple manufacturers and represents an average for the membership of the Western Red Cedar Lumber Association (WRCLA), a non-profit trade association representing manufacturers of western red cedar products. This average is based on a sample that included two lumber mills in British Columbia (BC), combined with recent secondary data on western red cedar resource extraction from the Athena Institute. The total data represents 20% of western red cedar decking production in the year 2007.
The major objectives of this project are to support the ATHENA™ Sustainable Materials Institute in its maintenance and further development of life cycle inventory (LCI) data on building materials and the accompanying software package (the ATHENA™ Environmental Impact Estimator); to support the integration of life cycle assessment (LCA) into popular green building programs such as LEED™; and to gather data to address various gaps or misperceptions regarding wood's environmental image.
