Social Product Declarations (SPDs)

A Social What? 🤔 Exploring the Future of Social Sustainability with Social Product Declarations (SPDs)

In this page, we’ve spent a lot of time discussing EPDs (Environmental Product Declarations), and by now, we hope you’re familiar with the terminology and the value they bring to sustainability efforts. But today, we’re excited to share something new that you might not have come across yet… SPDs (Social Product Declarations).

We just discovered this concept ourselves, and it’s got us intrigued! SPDs are designed to show the social sustainability performance of a product or service across its entire life cycle. Think of them as the social counterpart to EPDs—offering transparency and comparability in areas like worker conditions, community impact, and user safety.

What’s particularly interesting is that the world’s first SPD and the Product Category Rules (PCR) for SPDs were recently developed in collaboration with industry leaders like EPD International AB (The International EPD System), RWTH Aachen University and Hitachi Rail. This is a whole new level of sustainability reporting that could really shake things up.

Why Does This Matter?

🔎 Compliance and Transparency: SPDs help companies demonstrate leadership in social sustainability, offering a robust communication tool for stakeholders.

💹 Market Impact: With sectors like textiles, food, and mining in mind, SPDs can help highlight efforts to improve working conditions and community impact, which are critical in industries with challenging social footprints.

🤝 Public Procurement: Similar to EPDs, SPDs can play a key role in public procurement processes by providing standardized and comparable social sustainability data.

This initiative opens doors for industries to embrace social sustainability with the same rigor and transparency that environmental sustainability has seen.

You can read the full article: The world’s first Social Product Declaration in the EPD International article

So, we’re curious… Have you heard about SPDs before? What do you think about this new approach to social sustainability?