Construction manager designing a sustainable house.

Sustainability of construction products

Gaining the trust of customers with proven sustainability

Sustainability is becoming increasingly important for the construction industry and is a key factor for customers when choosing a product. TÜV Rheinland offers a wide range of services to help you convince your customers with tested sustainability.

We are your contact when it comes to chemical safety, health safety and environmental friendliness of building materials. From VOC (volatile organic compounds) and formaldehyde emission to REACH compliance, life cycle assessment, carbon footprint and environmental product declaration, we support you with consulting, testing, certification and much more.

Your benefits: You meet the legal requirements, increase the confidence of your customers, boost your chances in competition and take the tests as an opportunity to improve the quality of your products.

VOC and formaldehyde emissions – tests for healthy living

Construction materials can affect indoor air by emitting various types of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In the long term, this can lead to adverse health effects or diseases. Customers are not the only ones paying increasing attention to health aspects of construction products. The topic is so important for legislators to set requirements for manufacturer of building products. TÜV Rheinland examines your products for harmful substances, VOCs and quality criteria.

Thanks to our one-stop testing strategy, you benefit in two ways: If we have already carried out an emission test on your product, we can also make evaluations for other assessment systems at the same time, if you wish. This not only saves you precious time, but also costs. With VOC emission evaluations, you can meet the requirements of the following building certification systems:

BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology)
WELL Building Standard
DGNB (German Sustainable Building Council)
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, Interior Design + Construction)

REACH Services – safety for chemical products

From producers to importers, distributors and service providers to customers in the EU, the safe handling of chemicals is essential. The REACH regulation aims to ensure safety, but for many companies the regulation is difficult to implement due to its complexity. This is where TÜV Rheinland comes in: We support you at every stage of the process, from the successful registration to the approval of construction products. Our service portfolio includes informing manufacturers, distributors and importers about all important REACH requirements. In addition, we offer the following services:

risk analysis, including Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC)
conformity assessment
chemical analysis of the products according to REACH Appendix XVII
inventory of the chemical ingredients used

With our tests you protect your employees and customers, create easy handling of the products for producers, distributors and service providers and ensure a safe market access.

Life cycle assessment, carbon footprint, environmental product declaration

Neutral testing of the sustainability of construction products and companies helps to gain customer confidence. TÜV Rheinland will be happy to prepare a life cycle assessment for you. It considers a product's energy requirements, raw material consumption, waste, emissions to air, water and soil. We always take a close look at the entire life cycle. But we don't just draw up life cycle assessments, we also test, evaluate and certify them. Life cycle assessments and carbon footprint analysis helps identify current and potential environmental impacts of construction products. In this way, you as a company can be certain about your product's characteristics in terms of sustainability and use the information for marketing. Based on the insights, you can also optimize your product and minimize energy and raw material consumption as well as the resulting costs.

Our services for sustainable construction products

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

As a neutral and experienced service provider, TÜV Rheinland prepares life cycle assessments in accordance with DIN EN ISO 14040 and 14044. We are also happy to carry out comparative life cycle assessments for you, in which products and processes are compared in terms of their environmental performance.

Product Carbon Footprint (PCF)

We measure the greenhouse gases emitted in relation to your product over its entire life cycle. Based on the results, almost every product can still be optimized in terms of its environmental compatibility – certainly yours as well.

Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)

There is an increasing demand for sustainable building projects. Architects as well as construction planners are noticing this. For this reason, they are interested in the selection of sustainable construction products. We prepare Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for you according to ISO 14025 and support you in publishing the EPD in the database for sustainable construction.

Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF)

An increasing number of companies is committed to sustainable corporate management. That's why, in addition to products, we also test and certify companies in terms of sustainability. This gives you the opportunity to prove your climate neutrality, for example, by compensating for greenhouse gases.

Individual solutions for the evaluation of ecological sustainability

Our Life Cycle Assessment Manager is an Excel-based tool that can be individually adapted to your needs. It offers you the possibility to simulate production processes and material changes. As a starter tool, we also provide you with our Quick Check, which gives you an initial overview of the environmental impact of the materials you use for your product.