Environmental Product Declaration Approaches on the Brazilian Experiences: A Review

Abstract

The Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a type of label that has been considered reliable and complete, and it is commonly used in purchasing decisions, product design definition, environmental communication, data sources, and other applications. This article examines the approaches for the development of EPD in the Brazilian context, taking into account the initiatives of interested parties as well as the circumstances for its adoption by national firms. This work adds value by assessing which works in Brazilian literature and experiences focus on EPD, contextualizing the issue, and offering this type of label as a strategic resource. Between 2015 and 2022, the bibliographical survey uncovered 20 works. The Prisma 2020 checklist was utilized to conduct the systematic review, and the analysis in this study was both quantitative and qualitative. Since NBR ISO 14025 (2015), the publications have been consistent. Only 35% of the review content was obtained from journals, with 6 of the 7 publications resulting from academic works from their authors' postgraduate training processes, indicating a concentration of studies by a few scholars, all linked to universities in Brazil's south and southeast. Studies have shown that EPD is a valuable tool for environmental management due to its consistency, reliability, and completeness of data. However, due to a lack of Brazilian experience, this resource is not commonly known, disseminated, or employed. EPD has potential to be used as a strategic resource for businesses due to Brazil's normative, legal, and structural conditions for adoption.