I developed my first Life Cycle Assessment back in 2014 then developed my first Environmental Product Declaration in 2017, before then becoming qualified as an independent verifier.
But, don't worry, I'm not about to gatekeep the topic.
Quite the opposite. All of us here at LCA Support are passionate about encouraging more people into this sector and - dare we say it - making mistakes along the way.
Despite my own experience and qualifications, I'm still glad today to have other verifiers spotting my mistakes.
It’s like learning to drive. Even with a license, you’re not perfect. Your examiner was just satisfied you can continue learning under real world conditions.
Learning should never stop - including for examiners (or EPD verifiers in our case).
That’s why we can’t delay life cycle regulations to first perfect processes and practices. Less real world experience just means industry will be less competent and less competitive in future.
Lately, it feels the EPD world is splitting into different camps over the wider issue of quality.
One school of thought is that we must remain laser focused on LCA perfectionism above all else. The other is that we must democratise EPDs so more people can do them and use them even before they can all be perfect.
I fall more into the latter camp because the construction sector needs quality EPDs working at scale. We need more people knowledgeable about these topics, which means helping more people through the learning curve - both developers and across industry that needs better access to that valuable data.
To be fair though, it’s good to have people pulling in both directions in order to make the most progress. I love these debates.
There are lots of ideas about raising EPD quality, many focusing on louder public criticism. This isn’t a bad idea for challenging bad actors. But most people making mistakes with EPDs are well-intentioned and eager to learn more. Let’s lift them up, not tear them down. And let’s not be too inward focused.
We can argue over specifics - like the correct balancing of the PERM indicator between different life cycle modules - but it’s all for nothing if we leave the people making procurement decisions wondering what any numbers on an EPD mean.
Closing the literacy gap outside the EPD community helps close the quality gap within it.
Some people call themselves EPD experts without the qualifications and experience to justify that - and I know that irritates those who actually do have a high level of competence. Some make comparisons with the healthcare sector, pointing out that no one should call themselves an EPD expert for the same reason that no one should just call themselves a doctor.
I agree - and EPD verification should certainly remain of the highest quality.
But if we discourage more people becoming EPD developers and learning through mistakes (then must be spotted in the verification process) then we risk severely narrowing the EPD sector and the benefits it can bring to industry.
It could actually push more companies toward low quality options as the most easily available. Worse though, it could collapse the entire EPD system without wider adoption.
That's why comparisons to the healthcare sector have an added irony. Because doctors and other healthcare specialists actually do focus on raising quality at scale. Everyone needs healthcare so scale - not perfectionism - is the priority. On a daily basis, that means triaging where to focus resources. During a health crisis, it can mean makeshift hospitals and armies of (unqualified) volunteers making sure that the whole system doesn't collapse.
Does that comparison still apply to the EPD sector? Possibly, because we are in a climate crisis and industry needs to benefit at scale from quality EPDs. Any debate about how we raise the quality of EPDs must be about how we raise the quality of EPDs at scale.
Where do we want to be in 5/10 years?
Personally, I don’t just want more experience as an expert in a niche topic. The concept of an EPD specialist, as we know it today, should be redundant because EPDs should be widely understood and useful.
Given the scale and urgency of the climate crisis, let’s help as many people as possible make the most of EPD data sooner - and also know how to recognise quality.
Green washing and greenhushing are both byproducts of perfectionism too. Companies feel they have to either pretend they are perfect or say nothing at all.
But it’s ok to be humble and transparent so we can all share best practices as we constantly improve.
None of us started out as experts. And I know I’ll never be perfect.
But I appreciate how people across the EPD community keep helping me learn - including my more perfectionist peers.
(By the way, our marketing guy did once suggest we call our business LCA Experts or something like that but we said we always wanted to be LCA Support exactly because we want a cooperative partnership with our clients - and we know the title of expert can never truly be attained in such a fast moving sector.)