Updating of U.S. Wood Product Life-Cycle Assessment Data for Environmental Product Declarations

Abstract

The marketplace has an increasing desire for credible and transparent product eco-labels based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) data, especially involving international trade. Over the past several years, stakeholders in the U.S. wood products industry have developed many such “eco-labels” under the ISO standard of LCA-based environmental product declarations (EPDs). The standard requires data to be less than 10 years of age, a current issue that needs to be addressed for many structural wood products’ life-cycle inventories (LCIs). Under the umbrella of the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM), this data updating effort has begun. Some of these LCIs on wood products were originally evaluated as part of a CORRIM Phase I project and include softwood lumber, oriented strandboard, plywood, laminated veneer lumber, I-joists, and glulam. This paper provides the current process and status on updating wood products LCI data for LCA reports and EPDs.

Citation

Bergman, Richard; Oneil, Elaine; Puettmann, Maureen; Eastin, Ivan; Ganguly, Indroneil. 2014. Updating of U.S. Wood Product Life-Cycle Assessment Data for Environmental Product Declarations. Bergman R, Oneil E, Puettmann M, Eastin I, Ganguly I. 2014. Updating of U.S. wood product life-cycle assessment data for environmental product declarations. In: Proceedings, 2014 World Conference on Timber Engineering. Quebec City, Canada, August 10-14, 2014. 8 p.