As sustainability becomes increasingly critical, accurate information on the environmental impacts of products is essential. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) provide a transparent, detailed, and standardized overview of a product's lifecycle environmental footprint, including factors such as Global Warming Potential (GWP).
Diab provides EPDs for all its core materials, ensuring that customers have precise data to inform their sustainability decisions. With the correct basis for decision, you can effectively move in a more sustainable direction.
Understanding Environmental Product Declarations
EPDs are comprehensive, internationally standardized reports based on Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs). They detail environmental impacts, including resource use, energy consumption, emissions, and waste, across the entire lifecycle—from raw material extraction to disposal.
Diab’s EPDs adhere to rigorous international standards (ISO 14025), and each declaration is independently verified, providing a trustworthy basis for comparing materials and making informed decisions.
Beyond the GWP number
While Global Warming Potential (GWP)—a measure of a product's greenhouse gas emissions—is often highlighted, sustainability decisions require a deeper examination. A lower GWP per kilogram of material does not necessarily mean the lowest total environmental impact when the complete application lifecycle is considered.
Diab’s Advanced kits illustrate this clearly. By optimizing core design, these kits significantly reduce resin uptake, which can substantially decrease the total weight and, consequently, the total global warming potential (GWP) of the final application. For example, in an 80-foot infused sailboat hull, switching to an Advanced kit reduced resin use by over 30%, resulting in a total carbon footprint reduction of about 1.7 tonnes CO₂ equivalent—far greater than looking at material-level GWP alone.
Diab’s continuous improvements
Committed to further reducing environmental impacts, Diab actively works to lower emissions at its production facilities. By shifting entirely to renewable electricity and replacing fossil-fuel-based heating with bio-based alternatives, Diab has achieved a 35% reduction in the global warming potential (GWP) of its PVC foam products.
Additionally, Diab has implemented mass-balanced fossil-free PVC, certified through the ISCC PLUS system. This innovative step further reduces the dependency on fossil fuels, improves the sustainability profile of Diab’s Advanced kits, and provides customers with certified and traceable sustainable options.
Supporting informed sustainability choices
By providing clear, verified EPDs and innovative solutions, such as Advanced Kits, Diab empowers customers to make genuinely sustainable decisions. The combination of detailed lifecycle data and product innovations ensures choices that optimize not only immediate material impacts but also the long-term sustainability and performance of composite applications. Through transparency and continuous improvement, Diab remains committed to being at the core of sustainable progress.
