RINA is the first verification company that verified an EPD together with its related uncertainty. In particular, we verified Filmop International’s updated version of their EPD for cleaning trolley.
Filmop International has chosen to use the Italian standard UNI 11698:2017 (Environmental Management of Products - Estimation, reporting and use of the uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessment results - Requirements and guidelines) to calculate and display uncertainty values arising from life cycle inventory data on the indicators as presented in the EPD.
The standard provides requirements and guidelines for the estimation, reporting and use of the uncertainty of LCA. Information about the draft standard was presented at the EPD International Stakeholder Conference in Milan 2016, but this is the first known case where it has been applied for an EPD in the International EPD® System after the publication of the standard in 2017.
The main sources of uncertainty in LCA are:
Through the verified EPD, some components of the uncertainty / elements of variability are reduced, but only through the application of the standard UNI 11698:2017, the stochastic uncertainty linked to the inventory data is determined in a controlled and therefore comparable way.
The verification by an independent third party of the correct application of the UNI standard is fundamental for the purpose of guaranteeing the correctness of the uncertainty determination and therefore the applicability of the results obtained in the decision-making field (e.g.: tenders in connection with the criteria minimum environmental).
It is an innovative approach, in relation to the validation of monitoring data, because through the evaluation of the applied logics, the assumptions made, the supports and tools used and the correctness of the calculations applied to arrive at the percentages of uncertainty calculated for each of the environmental impact categories reported in the EPD document are enhanced validation, making the value of each impact comparable with the homolog of a different organization.
