GreenJams to publish Environmental Product Declaration

Visakhapatnam: Visakhapatnam-headquartered GreenJams, which produces carbon-negative building materials out of crop residues and industrial byproducts and won Swachhata Startup Challenge launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and Agence Francaise de Development (AFD), has claimed a major breakthrough in emerging as the world's first construction materials startup to publish a third-party verified Environmental Product Declaration.

The declaration, it says, proves its carbon-negative claim on the international EPD system. "We have created history by becoming the first Indian construction materials startup to publish an EPD for our flagship innovation Agrocrete. Through this stringent and transparent third-party verified process, the company has proven that Agrocrete is truly carbon-negative," Tarun Jami, founder and CEO of GreenJams, told Bizz Buzz on Thursday. The EPD was prepared by Monk Spaces, a New-Delhi based carbon consulting firm founded by Mili Jain. It is prepared following a stringent five-stage process established by the International EPD System and its technical committee.

The EPD was prepared and published with support from Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter - Habitat for Humanity and Villgro Innovations Foundation, under the ShelterTech and Housing Accelerator Programme, to make housing markets environmentally sustainable and inclusive in India.

He said "this is a landmark for the global and Indian construction industry. For the first time the industry has access to a verified-carbon-negative building block. Through Agrocrete we have now unlocked a new massively scalable and ultra-low cost method for carbon capture while creating value for our all-important beneficiaries, the farmers. The possibilities are massive - with the 900 million cubic metre of potential annual Agrocrete production we can capture at least 100 million tonne of CO2 and prevent 350 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. This year ITC Ltd alone has captured 38.5 tonnes of CO2 and avoided 144 tonnes of CO2 emissions by using Agrocrete at its Kapurthala project." The firm has another manufacturing unit at Parawada, near Visakhapatnam.

The third-party verified EPD published for Agrocrete shows that it is carbon-negative right from the start. This is on account of the biogenic carbon being stored in the crop residues used to produce Agrocrete. The EPD shows that its embodied carbon is -0.14 kg CO2/kg, meaning each metric tonne of Agrocrete captures 140 kilograms of carbon dioxide within itself. Even upon its end of life, the carbon dioxide captured within Agrocrete does not escape into the atmosphere, thus retaining its carbon-negative properties virtually forever. In addition, the manufacturing process does not cause any emissions and is based entirely on low voltage electricity, Jami stated.

In India, EPDs are published only by large enterprises and MNCs, perhaps as an ESG compliance obligation. Therefore, Visakhapatnam-headquartered GreenJams is immensely proud to be the only construction materials startup to publish an EPD and prove its next-generation sustainability ethos. For the many practitioners who design buildings with sustainability goals, there are very few products with accurate information about their environmental impacts. With this EPD, GreenJams is able to deliver transparency and the data necessary to build better buildings.