For further information on embodied material impacts and selecting particular types of resources visit our Material Selection & Resources section.
Selecting the right material options
It is important to understand that a life cycle assessment is always an estimation based on the best available data you have at the time. When you’ll have more accurate information to do the calculations e.g. exact manufacturers, it will probably be too late to apply any major changes to your design. Getting reasonable results is what matters. In many cases, there may be several choices for some material that are equally good and it is ok to just choose one of them. Later, when you will have more information, you can also improve your calculations.
Options to find the best match from the database
When you are looking for a certain material, please follow these steps:
Exact materials
To search for the exact product from the manufacturer you are planning to choose:
Filter materials by material type and search with the manufacturer name or exact product name.
Technically, a similar product from the same manufacturer is a good choice even if it does not have the brand name used in your country.
For instance, a glass wool slab with a similar thickness from the same manufacturer company will be okay even if the product name is different from the one used in your country.
Closest matches
If you cannot find the product from your manufacturer, try to search for other manufacturers typically used in your country:
Choose your country and type the material name (rock wool etc.).
You can also search for manufacturers in neighbouring countries that have similar construction products.
Generic data
If you cannot find a suitable product, choose a generic one with similar qualities.
This kind of generic materials can be found for instance in the German database oekobau.dat, which has a lot of average EU construction material data.
You can also choose the material type and just open the select menu to check the list of all the manufacturers available.
By following these steps you are likely to always use the best suitable data that is available at the time
If you know that you are choosing data from a certain manufacturer but you cannot find an EPD for the product it might also be a good idea to ask them for the EPD or check their website for it. For example, if the EPD is new or not yet published in any EPD database, the manufacturer might have it even if it doesn’t show up in our database. This will also encourage manufacturers to publish more EPD data in the future.
Searching based on location and distances
It is now also possible to search for materials based on location and distance relative to the project location.
Set the address of the project to be as specific as possible.
In the design's building materials section, click on "Add resource".
You will see this filter option in the search.
There are several options in this search:
Searching by distance based on your project location (which can still be edited)
Or by toggling the map view in the top right corner.
In the map view, you will always see only 250 resources. The emissions factors are displayed if it is a single source in a specific location. For more than a single resource in a specific location, you can click on the number, which opens up the choices.
