To support its customers’ targets to reduce their carbon emissions from supply chain, Outokumpu has published new environmental product declarations (EPDs) that provide externally verified environmental data on its stainless steel products. Outokumpu is driving the green transition by providing stainless steel with up to 75% lower carbon footprint compared to the global industry average. In 2023, Outokumpu’s products reduced their customers’ emissions globally by 12 million tons compared to the global average of stainless steel.
“Outokumpu aims to be its customers’ first choice in sustainable stainless steel. These externally verified EPDs help to improve data transparency in the stainless steel value chain and make it easier for our customers, for example in the construction, energy and marine industries, to choose materials that help them to reduce their carbon emissions. We at Outokumpu see the EPDs as an important opportunity to communicate the impact of our products in a highly transparent way,” said Heidi Peltonen, Vice President for Sustainability at Outokumpu.
Based on vast lifecycle analysis
The EPDs are a standardized way of providing data about the environmental impacts of a product. The published EPDs cover three stainless steel product groups: austenitic, ferritic and duplex. For each product group, the EPDs will cover both cold and hot rolled stainless steels, totaling the number of EPD documents to six.
The EPDs give information on a wide range of environmental impact indicators including carbon emissions, resource use, outflows and waste indicators. The calculations are based on vast lifecycle analysis that cover the stainless steel lifecycle from raw material extraction to manufacturing as well as end-of-life processing and recycling potential.
“The global demand for low carbon footprint materials is expected to grow. We are answering the demand by publishing these EPDs that provide even more specific data than before by covering a wider variety of stainless steel grades. Even though these new EPDs are not directly comparable to our previous ones, we can see that the carbon footprint of our stainless steel continues to be among the lowest in the industry,” Peltonen continued.
