Environmental Product Declarations are ecolabels that disclose the life cycle environmental performance of a product. They are very much like a nutrition label, only instead of the calories and protein content, the label tells you the carbon footprint, the water footprint and other environmental impacts calculated over the life cycle of the product.

A typical list of impact covered in an EPD would be:

• Climate Change (the carbon footprint)
• Stratospheric Ozone Depletion (the ozone hole)
• Acid Rain
• Eutrophication (nutrient pollution)
• Photochemical Smog
• Fossil Fuel Depletion
• Land Use
• Water Use (water footprint)
• Mineral Resource Depletion

Sometimes the ecolabel would also include

• Ecotoxicity
• Human Toxicity