Notes on EPD platforms and machine-readable declarations

Most environmental product declarations still live as PDFs. They are verified carefully and then become hard to use: someone retypes numbers into a database, or a buyer compares two documents by hand. In August 2026 I did a public-web research pass on one company working on that problem, Smart EPD, as a way to understand the space. This is a reading from public sources, not customer discovery.

What the company says it does

Smart EPD describes itself as an independent Type III EPD program operator, the role defined by ISO 14025. Its stated difference is capturing EPDs as structured, machine-readable records from the start, rather than verifying a PDF and digitizing it later. It reports more than 30 independent verifiers and more than 75 product category rules on its site. Those are company figures.

Where it sits in the chain

The flow I sketched:

LCA and source data, then a structured EPD workspace, then independent review, then a digital record and PDF, then distribution into databases like EC3 and procurement.

That places the wedge at the certification-to-distribution layer: trust and interoperability, adjacent to but different from LCA calculation software.

What I could not find

Public information on funding, pricing and headcount was thin, and the company's founding year appears differently in two of its own sources. I noted the conflict rather than resolving it. Absence of public reviews is not evidence either way.

Product opportunities I see in the space

• Making PCR selection and data entry less error-prone for LCA consultants.
• Tracking a declaration's lifecycle: expiry, renewal, versioning.
• Making structured EPD data easy to pull into design, procurement and reporting tools.
• Serving smaller manufacturers who need their first EPD.

All of these point back to the same theme: the data gap is often a workflow gap.