Environmental profiles - BRE Group
Environmental Profiles Certification Scheme for building materials
We have developed the Environmental Profiles Certification Scheme to provide ongoing, independent assessment and certification of environmental performance. This is useful for specifiers to fulfil a sustainability brief and for the manufacturers wanting to demonstrate a product’s environmental credentials.
Certification involves calculating the whole life environmental profile of a building material, product or system. This is a measure of all environmental impacts, during both manufacture and use, over a typical building lifetime. Once certified, environmental profiles are reviewed on an annual basis to ensure they remain valid, and are recalculated every three years.
Manufacturers benefit from certification by being able to positively distinguish their products from the competition in a way that purchasers will recognise and accept. Certification also provides performance benchmarks, a greater understanding of supply chain impacts, and the opportunity to identify and correct inefficiencies and environmental impact ‘hotspots’.
Specifiers benefit by being able to cut through the confusion of claims and counterclaims about green credentials. They can confidently select materials, products and systems in the knowledge that their environmental performance will be as specified.
Lists of building materials, products and systems that have been assessed and certified under the Environmental Profiles Certification Scheme can be found on Green Book Live.