EPC certification for Quinn Building Products
Company leading the way in new carbon footprint measurement scheme launched by Irish Green Building Council
QUINN Building Products are among the first companies in Ireland to develop Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for their products through a new programme launched by the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC).
The programme allows products to be benchmarked against a common set of rules for environmental impact, providing transparent, independently verified information to those who specify the products.
The scheme has been established in a bid to measure and reduce the environmental impact of the products used in Irish construction.
Quinn were one of three companies to receive EPD certificates at the IGBC’s first sustainable building materials conference, Re-Source 2018.
The company’s EPD certification encompasses four of its product ranges: Quinn Lite, Quinn Therm, Quinn Rooftiles and Quinn Lite Pac.
The ‘cradle to gate’ certificates demonstrate that every aspect of manufacturing has been looked at and independently verified, from raw materials through to dispatch, to assess the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process.
The process of developing EPDs requires analysis of large volumes of data on the types and volumes of materials and the energy types and processes that go into making the products.
It involves a full life-cycle assessment, drilling down into details such as sources of materials and their chemical constituents, details on energy types (eg fuel mix of electricity generated) and allocation (ie metering of electricity) across manufacturing processes.
Quinn also looked at the waste types generated and the end-of-life scenarios for these wastes.
Commenting on the company’s decision to develop EPDs, Quinn’s product development and specification manager, Jason Martin, said: ‘We’ve invested in the development of these EPDs because it aligns with our commitment as a company to reduce the environmental impact of our products and ensure we are a sustainable manufacturer.
‘The process involved is rigorous and has taken a lot of commitment, but we believe it’s important for us to be transparent and responsible in our manufacturing process, from the sourcing of raw materials right through to dispatch.
‘There is also a growing demand from the market for robust environmental certification and we’re proud to be among the first in Ireland to commit to this.’
