The last few months have seen some significant advances in the way Australian building products can be assessed and compared for their environmental impacts. As a result, many organisations are gearing up their product development, marketing, product certification and positioning to gain credits in building rating tools such as Green Star and the Australian Green Infrastructure Council’s (AGIC) rating tool. The Concrete Masonry Association of Australia (CMAA) and Think Brick Australia are among the organisations taking action in this field.
Over the last 3 years, the vigorously competitive Australian building products industries have collaborated under the auspices of the Building Products Innovation Council (BPIC) to develop and agree a “level playing field” methodology for life cycle assessment (LCA) comparisons. Now a new generation of LCA-based building design tools, product eco-labels and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) are being established.
The Concrete Masonry Association of Australia (CMAA) and Think Brick Australia have contributed to the BPIC project and are now engaged in the development of Environmental Product Declaration and eco-label standards for masonry products in the context of whole buildings. A National Standards committee with representation from all masonry product interests has developed the standards.
The process involves conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a unit (1m2) of masonry following the BPIC methodologies and protocols and using the BPIC industry average data for the masonry product baseline environmental performance. An LCA assesses a comprehensive range of environmental impacts over the whole supply chain and use of the products over their full life; from the extraction of raw materials, through all stages of production and transport, through construction, operation including cleaning and maintenance, and finally including demolition, disposal and reuse or recycling.
This research will be published alongside the “Masonry Products” ISO14024 compliant ecolabel standard and alongside ISO14025 compliant Product Category Rules as a basis for Environmental Product Declarations by masonry product suppliers. Edge Environment were commissioned by CMAA to conduct this research.
Edge Environment sees this is the first of hopefully many products groups that will use the recently launched BPIC tool kit to assess and certify environmental credentials.