Benefits

Sustainable Minds’ innovation in the PCR/EPD creation and delivery process:

  • Standardizes product transparency reporting

  • Makes disclosures understandable, meaningful and findable

  • Helps manufacturers build a credibly greener brand

  • Enables specifiers and purchasers to make informed greener product decisions

  1. Create standardized PCRs, more efficiently and effectively, for product groups.

    The SM Transparency Report 2-part PCR framework was designed to meet the scaling demand for environmental performance reporting. Creating Part Bs makes it easy for a single manufacturer, group of manufacturers or trade associations to make it easy to get started on product transparency reporting when:

    • You are in an industry

      • where no PCRs have been created yet

      • with many product categories, requiring multiple PCRs but only 1 created with boundary conditions not tight enough to effectively compare products; PCRs for specific product groups are needed

    • Your products are

      • in categories not addressed in current PCRs

      • made from materials and components that have EPDs, but no PCR to cover the products you make

    • Just you and/or several companies want to get started, time to market and response to customers is urgent, but

      • there's no European PCR so would need to start from scratch

      • don't have the budget to run a traditional PCR process

  2. Turn ‘disclosures’ into brand value – integrate product transparency into product marketing.

    An SM Transparency Report™, our brand of EPD, can be created using any new or existing PCR. In a concise 3-page format delivered in the cloud, they present both functional and environmental performance information, make LCA results understandable and enable a manufacturer to describe how they are making products greener.

    Specifiers and purchasers cannot easily understand and use traditional disclosures to make informed greener product decisions. Today many manufacturers are producing EPDs and material ingredient disclosures to 'check the box.' However, the presence of these reports is not an indication of a greener product. Soon, just checking the box won’t satisfy the real transparency demand, which is to provide consistent, understandable and meaningful information to help inform greener and healthier purchase decisions.

    Leverage your LCA investments into understandable and meaningful marketing tools to help build a credibly greener brand.

PCR process benefits People benefits
Enhanced consistency because all PCRs are based on the same Framework
  • Not relying on PCR committees to create generic rules that cover 80% while only ~20% is needed for each category.
  • Current PCRs are all different. To get to the whole building level, it must be based on a single framework, not a patchwork of PCRs.
  • Modular and additive, comparisons get better as more Part Bs are created.

Reduced front end of time and cost.

  • Manufacturers can easily get started creating Part Bs with support from the TAB & industry expertise.
  • The process provides for improvement over time rather than trying to get it all right for everyone up front.
  • Manufacturers: Save time, cost less, better results
  • Industry associations: Can play an appropriate guidance role identifying the right levels for Part Bs
  • LCA service providers: Easier to deliver standardized LCAs; Transparency Report new option to add to service delivery
  • Decision-makers (architects, builders) Easier overall – credible info needed to understand; rewards manufacturers
  • Green rating systems: More transparent LCA results faster to award points to decision-makers for making greener purchase decisions and build more green buildings