Material Passports: insight into what you create

In discussions about sustainable and circular construction, the terms material passport and EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) are often used interchangeably. While both contribute to a more sustainable built environment, they serve different functions. Understanding this distinction is important for clients, designers, suppliers, and policymakers who want to make and substantiate sustainable choices.

The material passport as a basis for circularity

A material, furniture, or building passport provides insight into the materials used in a product, piece of furniture, building, or structure. The document contains information on, among other things, composition, quantities, origin, and possibilities for reuse or recycling. This makes it an important tool within the circular economy.

The power of such a passport lies primarily in creating transparency. It reveals which raw materials are present and helps to redeploy these materials as high-value as possible in the future. Thus, it shows what is in a product, but not automatically how sustainable the product is.

The EPD as an objective environmental declaration

An EPD has a different purpose. This document presents the environmental performance of a product based on a life cycle assessment (LCA). It examines the environmental impact throughout the entire life cycle: from raw material extraction and production to transport, use, and end-of-life processing.

What distinguishes an EPD from many other sustainability documents is its degree of standardization. EPDs are prepared according to international EN and ISO standards and are independently verified before publication. When evaluating an EPD, ensure that it has indeed been independently verified. Only then are the results transparent, reproducible, and comparable.

For designers and purchasers, this provides a reliable basis for comparing products based on environmental performance and making choices that demonstrably contribute to a lower environmental impact.

Different goals, different requirements

Precisely because the goals differ, so do the requirements for a material passport and EPD are set.

A material passport is primarily focused on circularity and resource management. The emphasis is on recording information that can later be used for maintenance, renovation, disassembly, and reuse. However, there is no globally uniform standard for the content and structure of a material passport yet. As a result, the methods, data sources, and levels of detail used can vary widely.

An EPD, on the other hand, is explicitly developed as a standardized environmental document. The underlying methodology is fixed, and independent verification is an essential part of the process.

What you can measure, you can make circular.

Reliability and comparability

This does not mean that a material passport is less valuable than an EPD. On the contrary: without insight into material flows, a circular construction sector is unthinkable. However, the use of material passports requires a critical look at data quality.

The reliability of a material passport strongly depends on the method used, the timeliness of the information, and the quality of the data provided. When different parties use different principles, it becomes more difficult to compare material passports with each other.

For EPDs, this comparability is precisely one of the main advantages. Thanks to the standardized setup and independent verification, users can more confidently compare products and assess their environmental performance.

Complementary instead of competitive

In practice, material passports and EPDs complement each other. While a material passport answers the question 'what's in it?', an EPD answers the question 'what is the environmental impact?'. Compare it to an ingredient list on a food product: it shows what a product consists of, but not directly how healthy it is. For a complete picture, multiple measurement methods are needed.

EPDs primarily concern newly created materials; if you reuse materials within a project, creating an EPD becomes virtually impossible because this is often a short-term, non-reproducible, and non-independently verifiable process. In such a situation, a material passport, supplemented with the fixed impact of transport and any modifications, offers a solution to still get a good understanding of the impact of a reused piece of furniture, component, or material.  

For organizations aiming for both circular and sustainable construction, the greatest added value therefore lies in combining material passports and EPDs.

The material passport supports the circular strategy, while EPDs provide objective and verifiable substantiation of environmental performance. Together, they form a powerful foundation for the built environment of the future.

Transparency and circularity in practice

At Zwartwoud, we link material passports and EPD data to our circular projects already during the development phase. This way, material passports become not only a tool for registration but also an aid for design optimization and impact measurement. By linking the materials used to the EPD data, we make visible how materials contribute to CO₂ reduction, circular performance, and sustainable material use. This creates a more complete picture of the environmental impact of an interior.

A concrete example is a modular wall panel that is provided with information about wood type, coating, weights of the different materials, the mutual fastening methods, and future disassembly. Thanks to dry connections and a demountable design, components can be easily detached and reused within a new interior.

From insight to future-proof design

Because we create material passports at the furniture level, we call this document a furniture passport. The Zwartwoud furniture passport is developed in consultation with and tailored to the customer. This document specifies what percentage of the furniture consists of reused, bio-based, recycled, or new material. The passport also includes a product breakdown of the furniture, making it visible at the component level how the product is constructed and how parts can be detached. This provides insight into the future applicability of materials and components.

Our furniture passports align with future developments such as the Digital Product Passport (DPP), in which data on origin, circularity, maintenance, and environmental performance will be made digitally available. This transforms the furniture passport from an internal document into an important instrument within circular value chains and future European regulations such as the ESPR.