Case Study

Measuring Our Products’ Environmental Impact: From The Cradle To The Grave

Our ethos in our approach to reducing our impact on the environment is to make it as meaningful as possible. We want to drive this process quickly and to lead our industry with the breadth and depth of our commitments.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our development of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). EPDs provide key insight into environmental credibility by offering transparency on the sustainability of materials and products. They are a widely accepted process of evaluating the true levels of sustainability for products, based on data obtained through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). They serve as key indicators to housebuilders, architects and specifiers who are looking to fully understand the environmental footprint in their projects. 
Not everyone agrees on what should be included in an EPD. Some examine the impact up to the point it has been manufactured and is stored in a warehouse, which is known as a cradle-to-gate LCA. This is easier to do but doesn’t show the full picture. Equally, not all companies seek third-party verification of their EPDs but, at Ideal Standard, we think it’s important to ensure we publish impartial, standardised and comparable information. 
In common with our approach to reducing packaging [link] and waste [link], we are taking our approach to EPDs as far as possible as fast as we can. Our commitment is to analyse the environmental impact of our products from the extraction of the raw materials all the way through manufacture and the period of use to its deconstruction. Our approach to EPDs is truly from the cradle to the grave.

What we did

Cradle-to-grave EPDs are the most detailed type available, meaning Ideal Standard will be providing complete transparency on the entire life cycle of our manufactured products. This includes where the material is sourced, how it is transported, how products are created and maintained, and any end-of-life processes. We also wanted our approach to be technical and detailed but to strike a balance that would allow for scalability. 

The solution was to develop one EPD to cover each product type and to scale from there. For example, we have produced an EPD for all single lever basin mixers, which gives a breakdown per kilogram of product. If a mixer tap weighs 5kg, the EPD is multiplied by five. It’s simple but meaningful at the same time.
Given Ideal Standard’s position as a leading manufacturer in the bathroom industry, we decided to work with Institut Bauen und Umwelt e.V. [link to: https://ibu-epd.com/en/] and INIES [link to: https://www.inies.fr/], two of Europe’s most respected EPD programmes, to verify ours to International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14025 standards. All future products created by Ideal Standard will undergo the same process.
These new EPDs will also provide Ideal Standard customers with greater insight into the products that make up their projects. This level of transparency helps specifiers and architects to meet environmental targets, offers clearer supply chain oversight, and will ultimately enable Ideal Standard to improve the sustainability of our own portfolio by identifying where improvements can be made.

The outcome

An initial set of 2,400 products – made up of single lever taps and toilet packs – is currently undergoing verification, with details set to be released at the end of February 2023. We plan to disclose cradle-to-grave EPDs for over 5,500 products by the end of 2023, including bidets, basins, pedestals, urinals, thermostatic mixers, cisterns, bathtubs, shower trays and electronic taps. 

[Pull-out quote]
 “For the last 18 months we’ve been focused on offering our customers complete transparency, and the release of these EPDs is a big part of that. We want to help our customers select the right products for projects, with the aim of creating more environmentally friendly buildings.
“Additionally, the detailed data we’ve gathered during this process will help us to make more informed decisions around what materials we are using in our products and the wider impact they have. This means we can make more sustainable choices earlier, even at the research and development stage.”
Jan-Peter Tewes, Joint CEO Ideal Standard International

What’s next?

In 2024, we will release the final phase of EPDs, covering toilet seats, flushing systems and furniture.
We are already using what we have learnt so far in the process of creating EPDs in the development of new Ideal Standard ranges. Our intention is that the data gathered during this process will play a big part in future product design, enabling us to embed the sustainable design values we call “EcoLogic”.