ECOR panels hold more carbon than their production releases. The finding that matters more is where that carbon came from, because not every negative number in a product declaration means the same thing.
ECOR Global has completed an Environmental Product Declaration covering our full panel family, prepared in accordance with EN 15804:2012+A2:2019 and ISO 14025 and supported by an independent life cycle assessment of our Serbian manufacturing facility drawing on a full year of 2025 production data.
What an EPD is, and what it is not
An Environmental Product Declaration is a third-party-verified report of a product’s environmental performance across its life cycle, from raw material supply through manufacturing, transport, installation, and end-of-life. Because every declaration follows the same product category rules and reporting method, results can be compared directly rather than taken on trust. Ours is a group EPD covering the full ECOR range: ECOR 1, HB, and FLR, plus ECOR PLY in 6, 10, 12, and 18 mm, with scope A1 to A3 for production, A4 and A5 for delivery and installation, C1 to C4 for end of life, and Module D for benefits beyond the system boundary.
One clarification is worth making, because it is widely misunderstood. An EPD is not a grade, a score, or a threshold that a product passes. It contains no minimum standard and awards nothing. It reports measured results in a standardized format and leaves interpretation to the reader. That is precisely why the numbers inside one deserve attention, and why the question of where a negative figure comes from is the reader’s to ask.
What the results show
For the declared ECOR 1 panel, the biogenic carbon captured at module A1 outweighs the emissions from transport and manufacturing at A2 and A3, resulting in a net cradle-to-gate global warming potential of approximately −36 kg CO₂-eq per panel. ECOR PLY 6 mm returns approximately −34 kg CO₂-eq. For scale, US EPA equivalency figures put that at roughly the emissions of driving an average passenger vehicle ninety miles, with the sign reversed.
Module D extends the picture past disposal. Because ECOR panels can be reprocessed into new material rather than landfilled, the declaration records a further net credit of approximately −13 kg CO₂-eq per ECOR 1 panel at that stage. Alongside the carbon data, the straw, cardboard, and paper inputs are entirely bio-based. Because the fibers are bound by heat, pressure, and water rather than adhesive, the panels carry no added formaldehyde.
Stored, not borrowed: why the source of the carbon decides the value of the number
A negative carbon figure can mean two very different things, and the difference determines whether the number holds up under scrutiny.
Zero is the reference point worth holding in mind. A panel at zero would be carbon neutral at the factory gate: everything emitted in making it exactly offset by carbon held inside it. Published declarations for conventional panels are spread widely around that line, from roughly +387 kg CO₂-eq per cubic meter at one end to figures well below zero at the other, depending on density, energy mix, and how each declaration treats the carbon stored in its raw material. That last variable is where the comparison becomes meaningful.
A wood-based panel that reports a negative figure is counting carbon that a tree spent decades accumulating and that was already stably stored before anyone cut it down. The declaration is accurate. But the carbon has been moved from one store to another rather than added to the total, and research published in Nature and Science Advances puts the payback period for that transfer at decades and, in many harvest scenarios, longer than the panel itself will last. The carbon is borrowed against a forest that has to regrow to settle the account.
ECOR’s carbon has a different history. Cereal straw is a residue with a one-season fate: burned in the field or decomposed, with its carbon back in the atmosphere before the next harvest. Capturing it in a panel does not draw down a long-established store. It intercepts carbon already on its way back to the air and holds it for the service life of a building component instead.
Both products can report a negative number. One is holding carbon that was going to be released anyway. The other is holding carbon that was already safely stored and now must be regrown. Only the first one adds to the total.
This is not a distinction we invented for a blog post. It is the reason SBTi FLAG guidance asks companies to account for land-use carbon separately from product-level figures, and the reason the EU Deforestation Regulation places wood-fiber panels under supply chain due diligence that straw-based panels sit outside entirely. Regulators and standard-setters arrived at the same question independently: not how large the number is, but what would have happened to that carbon otherwise.
For a specifier or a procurement team, the practical translation is short. Both figures appear in a report. Only one of them survives the follow-up question.
Why 2026 is the year this matters
Environmental data has moved from marketing material into trade infrastructure. The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism enters its definitive regime in 2026, pricing embodied emissions at the border. In the United States, GSA Buy Clean pilots and California’s CALGreen embodied carbon requirements have made EPDs a condition of bidding rather than a differentiator. And under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, a buyer’s Scope 3 disclosure depends directly on the declarations their suppliers can produce. Research on EPD adoption reports the same shift from the demand side: a large majority of architecture, engineering, and construction professionals now prefer products with a declaration when specifying.
What this changes
It removes a documentation barrier. Specifiers and procurement teams who wanted to use ECOR but could not evidence it in their own reporting now can, on the same footing as any conventional alternative to plywood, MDF, or HDF, with results that contribute to LEED, BREEAM, and WELL submissions. The full declaration and the supporting gate-to-gate study are available on request, so these figures can be reviewed in their original context rather than taken from a summary.
Sources
ECOR Global d.o.o. Environmental Product Declaration in accordance with EN 15804:2012+A2:2019 and ISO 14025, covering ECOR 1, ECOR HB, ECOR FLR, and ECOR PLY panels. LCA by e Odraz d.o.o., Belgrade. Reference year 2025.
ECOR Global d.o.o. Gate-to-Gate Analysis Supporting EPD, ECOR 1 and ECOR PLY 6 mm, Serbia facility. Reference year 2025.
EN 15804:2012+A2:2019. Sustainability of Construction Works — Environmental Product Declarations — Core Rules for the Product Category of Construction Products. European Committee for Standardization.
ISO 14025:2010. Environmental Labels and Declarations — Type III Environmental Declarations — Principles and Procedures. International Organization for Standardization.
ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006. Environmental Management — Life Cycle Assessment — Principles and Framework; Requirements and Guidelines.
EPD International. “What Is an EPD?” On the disclosive, non-comparative nature of Type III declarations: EPDs contain no thresholds, value judgments, or pass/fail criteria.
Peng, L., Searchinger, T.D., Zionts, J., and Waite, R. “The Carbon Costs of Global Wood Harvests.” Nature 620 (2023): 110–115.
Favero, A., Daigneault, A., and Sohngen, B. “Forests: Carbon Sequestration, Biomass Energy, or Both?” Science Advances 6, no. 13 (2020).
“Carbon Accounting for Forest Products: Carbon Debt and the Time Dimension.” Forest Science, 2024.
World Resources Institute. “Harvesting Wood Has Overlooked Carbon Costs.” 2023.
Science Based Targets initiative. Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) Science Based Target-Setting Guidance. 2022.
Published MDF and fiberboard EPD results referenced for range: EPD Ireland (2022), EPD Hub (2023), and IBU (2023) declarations, as compiled in the One Click LCA materials database.
“Over Twenty Years of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs): From Communication Tools to Sustainability Decision-Support Systems.” International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 2026.
“Bridging the Sustainability Divide: A Systematic Review of Environmental Product Declarations for Construction Materials (2015–2025).” Atlantis Press, 2025.
“Environmental Product Declaration Development and Utilisation for Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment: Challenges and Data Quality Assurance Indicators.” Journal of Cleaner Production, 2025.
“Global Emissions and International Trade: Quantifying the Impact of Carbon Border Adjustments.” Energy Economics, 2025.
OECD. What to Expect from the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Paris, 2025.
Hussain, A., et al. “Life Cycle Assessment of Wood-Based Panels: A Review.” Journal of Cleaner Production, 2024.
“Life Cycle Assessment of a Straw-Based Fiberboard Without Binders Produced at Laboratory Scale.” Discover Sustainability, 2025.
“From Agricultural Waste to Walls with Carbon Storage: A Life Cycle Assessment of Wheat Straw Insulation in a Circular Bioeconomy.” Cleaner Environmental Systems, 2026.
Regulation (EU) 2023/956 establishing a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism; Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on deforestation-free products; Directive (EU) 2022/2464 (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive).
Carbon Leadership Forum. EPD Requirements in Procurement Policies; Buy Clean Policies: Overview and Implementation. University of Washington.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator.