PHOENIX, AZ — Vetrazzo, a manufacturer of recycled-glass surfaces announced during Greenbuild 2009 that it had published an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), allowing customers to verify the reduced impacts of its product line.
Vetrazzo's EPD, which uses a green audit to measure the full lifecycle impacts of products, was developed by MindClick SGM and registered in The Green Standard. Vetrazzo joins a small number of firms, including InterfaceFLOR, Bentley Prince Street, Knoll, Rmax and Shaw Contract, as the only U.S. companies to file a complete EPD with The Green Standard.
"Publishing an Environmental Product Declaration was a natural step for us to take as part of our commitment to credible and transparent communications about our environmentally responsible practices," James Sheppard, Vetrazzo CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. "By helping us develop an EPD, MindClick SGM has provided third-party scientific credibility supporting our efforts in setting the sustainability standard for our industry."
Publishing a full lifecycle EPD will allow Vetrazzo to both back up its green claims in a way that's publicly verifiable and internationally accepted, as well as set the bar for other companies in the space that are also making green claims for their products.
Vetrazzo's EPD verifies the company's zero-waste manufacturing process, and lays out the carbon footprint of its product as 193.35 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per square meter of installed countertop.
The EPD is based on the International Standards Organization's ISO 14025 standards and verified through a third-party review to ensure accuracy. The Green Standard, an the organization that manages EPDs for U.S.-based companies, launched during Greenbuild 2008, and an International EPD Consortium has been overseeing global EPDs for the last 10 years.
The Green Standard has developed its Gaia Product Profile software to integrate a range of environmental performance information into a single document.
For more news from Greenbuild 2009, visit GreenerBuildings.com/Greenbuild2009.