Three Pillars Consulting recently worked alongside UNIDO and hashtag
#IDDI to release a recent brief 'explainer' titled "Using Type I Ecolabels and Type III EPDs: Harmonizing Reporting for Green Public Procurement and Green Building Programs" offers a blueprint for decarbonizing public procurement and the built environment.
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐭?
Type I Ecolabels (multi-criteria, pass / fail labels) streamline green public procurement (GPP) by offering simple threshold-based indicators of environmental performance—ideal for broad enterprise-level policies.
Type III Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) deliver highly-quantitative, third-party verified measurements of greenhouse gas emissions (GWP) and other life-cycle assessment (LCA) indicators, essential for designing and assessing low-carbon building projects. EPDs are already core to frameworks like LEED, BREEAM, International Product Certification Programs, and EU Regulations.
Crucially, the paper lays out how combining these tools—Ecolabels and EPDs—can reduce duplication and provide interoperable, streamlined reporting across GPP and green building initiatives.
𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬:
Government-related projects are under growing pressure to reduce embodied carbon emissions in infrastructure and industrial materials. This harmonized approach supports both demand stimulation—for low-carbon construction materials—and consistency in emissions accounting.
