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Elk Grove Village, Ill. — May 6, 2015 — Petersen Aluminum’s recently released Environmental Product Declaration delivers cradle-to-grave transparency for the manufacturing, installation, maintenance, and recycling of its roll-formed steel and aluminum roof and wall panels.
The EPD pulls back the curtain on environmental impact for architects and specifiers who are looking for products with documented and verified environmental impact data. The EPD also can help architects and specifiers earn LEED points, as well as credits for other sustainable construction programs. Architects, specifiers, and other construction professionals who choose Petersen Aluminum products covered by its EPD can qualify for credit within the category of Material and Resource, Building Product Disclosure and Optimization in LEED v.4.
Green Globes and other sustainable building certification programs also offer credit for EPDs.
Petersen Aluminum brand name products covered by its EPD include Snap-Clad, Tite-Loc, Tite-Loc Plus, Snap-On, and Redi-Roof roofing panels, as well as exposed fastener wall panels, corrugated horizontal wall panels, and flush and reveal wall panels. Petersen Aluminum published its EPD to meet the increasing demand in the construction community to recognize the full extent of a product's environmental impact. Release of its EPD titled “Roll-Formed Cladding, Aluminum Panels and Steel Panels” positions Petersen Aluminum as a leader in sustainability and environmental impact transparency. The EPD also demonstrates Petersen Aluminum’s willingness to benchmark its performance as a means toward continuous improvement. The EPD was carefully prepared by Thinkstep and certified by UL Environment, which painstakingly verified all pertinent information in the report. The EPD is valid until March 2020 and will be updated based on continued process improvements. “Going through the process was an eye opener, and has identified ways for us to improve efficiencies in our production process,” said Mike Petersen, CEO, Petersen Aluminum. “We are also working to reduce packaging costs across our product line. All of this is the result of working through the EPD process, which is ongoing.
"We are pleased to be one of the first American companies to publish an Environmental Product Declaration for our roofing and wall panel product lines. We are grateful for first working with the Metal Construction Association a couple of years ago to create their industry-wide EPD, which laid the ground work for our EPD.” Prior to publishing its EPD, Petersen Aluminum participated in an EPD with five other Metal Construction Association member companies, all of which manufacture metal cladding panels. MCA published its industry-wide, cradle-to-gate EPD titled “Roll Formed Steel Panels for Roofs and Walls” in February 2014.
Both EPDs follow UL’s Product Category Rule, “Metal Cladding, Roof and Wall Panels,” and were prepared according to ISO 14025. But Petersen Aluminum’s EPD goes beyond the MCA’s report – which stops at the factory gate – by providing a cradle-to-grave examination of its products’ life cycles. In addition, it also focuses only on Petersen Aluminum products, including extraction and transport of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation to installation site, installation, panel maintenance, and end-of-life disposal. EPDs provide transparency into the impacts of a product at each stage of its life cycle. Increasingly, building owners and operators are requiring products for which EPDs exist. According to UL Environment, 65 percent of consumers globally agree or strongly agree that they would purchase environmentally responsible products if a company’s health and environmental claims were more believable. The U.S. Green Building Council states that the goal of an EPD is to encourage the use of products and materials for which life-cycle information is available and that have environmentally, economically, and socially preferable life-cycle impacts.
Another goal is to reward project teams for selecting products from manufacturers who have verified improved environmental life-cycle impacts.
Petersen Aluminum’s EPD and the products it covers, including those from other manufacturers, can be found on UL’s Sustainable Product Guide found at Productguide.ulenvironment.com. Download the company's EPD at https://www.pac-clad.com/environmental-product-declaration/.
