Publishing EPDs

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a standardized, third-party-verified document that reports a product’s environmental impacts across its life-cycle. EPDs follow Product Category Rules (PCRs) — which define what to measure and how — and are published through a program operator that manages verification and hosting. Variable’s Declarations workspace turns a verified Product LCA into a complete EPD draft that you can send to a program operator for review and publication.

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The publishing workflow

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Program operators

Variable currently integrates with:

• SmartEPD — connect via Company Settings → Integrations with a SmartEPD API key. Once connected, you can browse workspaces, PCCs, and projects directly from the Declaration sync dialog.

If you use a different program operator, you can still export the EPD data from Variable and submit it manually.

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Manufacturing plants

When you sync a Declaration to SmartEPD, each of the LCA’s Facilities becomes its own manufacturing plant in your SmartEPD organization, with the facility’s name and address. A same-named plant no other facility uses is reused, and renaming a facility or changing its address updates the plant on the next sync. SmartEPD can archive a plant but not delete it.

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Re-syncing after edits

If you edit the underlying Product LCA after a successful sync, the Declaration’s sync state moves to out_of_date. Re-run the sync from the EPD page to push the latest results to the operator. Variable will update the existing remote document rather than creating a new one. The report’s Sync data sources table setting, in the menu beside the sync button, controls which datasets behind the model are listed in SmartEPD’s Data sources table: tick any of Material, Energy, Process and Transport. Nothing is ticked by default, so a re-sync removes a table that an earlier sync sent, along with anything added to it in SmartEPD. A dataset with no category is never listed. While the operator reports the EPD in review, the operator doesn’t accept edits, so the sync fails without changing anything. Re-sync once the operator has ruled on it. Re-sync is disabled while the operator has the EPD in review, since SmartEPD doesn’t accept edits then. Once the reviewer approves or rejects it, or requests changes to reopen it, Check EPD status picks up the new status and Re-sync is available again. An EPD the reviewer has returned with feedback shows Flagged; Re-sync and Submit for verification stay available on it, and Variable keeps checking its status until the reviewer approves or rejects it. Once an EPD has been synced, the sync popover’s title — the operator’s name — links straight to the EPD in the operator’s app. You don’t have to open each Declaration to check where it stands: every card in the Declarations list shows its latest sync state, so a failed or out-of-date sync is visible at a glance.

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What locking a Declaration freezes

While a Declaration’s version is a draft, its report tracks your model. Change a material, a quantity, or a life-cycle stage and the impact results, Materials, Packaging materials, renewable electricity, and System boundaries sections follow on your next view of the report. Once Variable takes that version past draft — to locked, in review, rejected or verified — those sections hold the values they had at that point. Later edits to the product’s model no longer change what the report — or the PDF exported from it — says. To publish updated numbers, issue a new Declaration. This is the Declaration’s own version state, and Variable sets it for you. The states mean what Product and material versioning describes, but that page’s procedure for locking a version — and its rule that a locked version can never return to draft — covers products and materials, not Declarations. It is also not the program operator’s status. An operator marking your EPD approved or published moves the Declaration’s own workflow state (step 5 above) and doesn’t by itself freeze these sections.

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Where a material comes from

The Materials and Packaging materials tables on a Declaration’s report have an Origin column: where each row’s materials are made. Variable reads a material’s origin at country level, taking the first of these it finds:

1. The countries of its manufacturing facilities.
2. Its location.
3. Its supplier’s default location, or the supplier’s only location if it has just one.
4. Where the A2 transport lane that brings it to your product starts.

When none of these places a material in a country, Variable reads the same four again, in the same order, for a region such as Europe, Scandinavia or North America. A row lists its countries first and then its regions, for example “Germany, Europe”. World and Global aren’t regions, so a material placed only there still adds nothing. A row that groups several materials lists every country they come from. A material Variable can’t place adds nothing, so a row where none can be placed is blank rather than reading “Unknown”. To fill one in, open the material’s Settings and add a facility or a location, give its supplier a default location, or give the material an A2 transport lane that starts in a country. A Declaration taken past draft before Variable showed origins keeps the tables it had, so its Origin column stays blank.

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What’s in a published EPD

A typical EPD published via Variable includes:

• Product description — name, declared unit, and reference flow.
• System boundaries — which life-cycle stages (A1–A3, A4, A5, B1–B7, C1–C4, D) are included.
• Impact results — values per indicator (GWP-fossil, GWP-total, AP, EP, ODP, POCP, ADPE, ADPF, water use, and others) per life-cycle module.
• Scenarios — transport, installation, use, maintenance, repair, replacement, refurbishment, operational energy and water use, end-of-life, and benefits and loads beyond the system boundary. The Declaration only offers the scenario sections its own scope covers — the stages its PCR requires, the stages its model covers, and the stages you’ve ticked under the product’s System boundaries — so you won’t see all ten on every product. A section you’ve started stays available even if the scope later narrows, and you can remove one you no longer need — which discards the values you entered in it.
• Data quality — DQR scores, the ecoinvent / DEFRA / Ember dataset versions used, and the Declaration’s data quality discussion narrative.

See Life-cycle stages explained for the EN 15804+A2 stage reference, and Impact indicators for the full list of indicators Variable reports.