Breakout: Carbon 101
Understand the Documents
In order to assess the carbon footprint of a project, designers have to rely on certain types of documents and information.
LCA
A Life Cycle Assessment of all the environmental impacts of any project, product, process, or organization. LCAs assess all the impacts from “Cradle to Grave,” which means they cover everything from the origin of materials to the end of its useful life.
EPD
An Environmental Product Declaration is a third-party certified report created by manufacturers to communicate all the environmental impacts of their product or material offerings, as defined by material-specific Product Category Rules and ISO standards. It translates the information from a product LCA into specific data points (called “indicators”) that designers can use to inform their decisions. EPDs are available as PDF documents on manufacturer websites (look in the sustainability data for any product) or from databases like mindful MATERIALS, the Sustainable Minds Transparency Catalog, or EC3. (Dig deeper with this primer from the Carbon Leadership Forum)
GWP
Standing for Global Warming Potential, this is the number that represents embodied carbon on an EPD. The GWP is measured in kgCO2e/unit, but it doesn’t represent just carbon dioxide emissions—it actually measures how much energy the emissions of 1 ton of a gas will absorb over 100 years, relative to the emissions of 1 ton of carbon dioxide (CO2). So it takes into account the global warming that could be caused by any greenhouse gasses emitted per unit of the product. For some products, a unit might be defined by area (example: one square foot) while in others it might be by volume (example: one cubic foot) or weight. This is why GWP numbers cannot be compared directly across different types of products.
Baselines
How can you tell if the GWP number you are seeing on an EPD is “good” or “bad” for that particular type of product? That’s where baselines come in. Published by the Carbon Leadership Forum annually, these numbers provide a benchmark for GWP for many material categories. The 2023 baselines are available here.
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