Two documents now carry most of the weight in a sustainable flooring specification: the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) and the Cradle to Cradle certificate. One tells you the carbon and environmental impact; the other tells you about material health and circularity. The Organic Collection holds both. Here is what they actually say, and how they translate into BREEAM, LEED and WELL credits.
What an EPD is, and what the Organic EPD says
An EPD is a third-party-verified, standardised statement of a product’s environmental impact across its life cycle, produced to EN 15804. It is the only defensible source for the carbon number on a project sustainability dashboard. The Organic Collection’s EPD, to EN 15804+A2, reports cradle-to-gate embodied carbon of 2.76 kg CO2e/m2 (A1–A3), low for a resilient floor, and notes that the renewable castor and canola feedstock stores 1.55 kg CO2/m2 of biogenic carbon. We quote the figure as the EPD states it: a low embodied-carbon floor, not a carbon-negative one.
What Cradle to Cradle Silver means
Cradle to Cradle Certified assesses a product across five categories: material health, product circularity, clean air & climate, water & soil stewardship, and social fairness. A product is rated at the level of its lowest category, so an overall Silver rating, held by the Organic Collection since 2018, is a meaningful bar to clear. For specifiers it is shorthand for a floor whose ingredients are assessed as safe and whose materials are designed to be recovered, not landfilled.
The supporting certifications
Around those two sit Blue Angel (the German eco-label) and GREENGUARD Gold (UL low-emissions certification). The first speaks to whole-product environmental performance; the second to chemical emissions and indoor air quality. Together with the EPD and Cradle to Cradle certificate, they form a complete evidence pack rather than a marketing claim.
How it converts into credits
In BREEAM, the EPD supports the Mat credits (life-cycle impact and responsible sourcing) and the emissions data supports Hea 02. In LEED, the EPD contributes to the Building Product Disclosure and Optimization credits, and Cradle to Cradle is a recognised material-ingredient route. In WELL, the low-emissions and material-health evidence supports the Materials concept. The paperwork exists, so the design team spends its time specifying rather than chasing documentation.
The honest summary
The Organic Collection is a low-embodied-carbon, PVC-free, Cradle to Cradle Silver floor with full third-party evidence. It is not marketed here as carbon-negative, that claim belongs to cork, which carries a separate EY life-cycle study. Keeping each material to what its own documentation supports is exactly what makes the evidence usable in a submission.