June 23, 2015
Bringing clarity to transparency for North American building materials market
MARIETTA, Ga., June 23, 2015 — UL Environment, a business division of UL (Underwriters Laboratories), today announced the publication of a new material-agnostic Product Category Rule (PCR) for cladding products. Using this new PCR will allow manufacturers to cut through the clutter of the 14 different material-specific PCRs currently existing.
The market demand for increased transparency and data in the building materials marketplace has been growing exponentially. Driven in part by updates to green building rating systems such as LEED® which provide for credits for using transparency documentation such as Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), this growth is also due to to the larger industry and occupant call for more visibility into -- and data about -- the materials that impact the environment in the spaces they occupy.
“We recognized the need to simplify, streamline, and harmonize the process to enable greater and easier adoption,” said Anna Nicholson, EPD product manager with UL Environment. “That led us to work with a PCR Development Committee to cut through the clutter and develop a material-agnostic, holistic PCR for the North American market.”
However, EPDs and the PCRs on which they are based are still far from the harmonized, globally-comparable instrument that is the ideal. It is to this end that UL Environment – the largest EPD Program Operator in North America -- is working with partners, such as the U.S. Green Building Council and industry, to support more standardized transparency documentation which will provide the data to support the needs of specifiers, builders and occupants.
The new PCR, along with all of UL Environment’s existing PCRs, can be found at https://industries.ul.com/environment/transparency/product-category-rules-pcrs.