To reduce the burden on the environment from construction products by recognising and encouraging measures to optimise construction product consumption efficiency and the selection of products with a low environmental impact (including embodied carbon), over the life cycle of the building.

• Help project teams to understand the overall environmental impact of the building design.
• Ensure that all life cycle greenhouse gas emissions are taken into account in the design, not just operational emissions.
• Reduce the impact of the construction industry and construction product industries.
• Assess the environmental impacts at the building level to provide flexibility when specifying construction products, to take into account project-specific conditions and priorities.
• Allow optimal solutions to be identified and adopted to reduce overall environmental impacts arising from construction product use.

The use of construction products leads to a wide range of environmental and social impacts across the life cycle through initial procurement, wastage, maintenance and replacement. Taken together, construction products make a highly significant contribution to the overall life cycle impacts of a building. In some cases they may even outweigh operational impacts (such as energy consumption).

The introduction of Part L into the building regulations has led to reductions in the operational energy consumption of buildings and these regulations are being progressively tightened As a result, greenhouse gas emissions from other aspects of buildings, such as embodied emissions, are becoming increasingly important in terms of reducing the overall emissions in terms of reducing the overall emissions that lead to climate change and arise from the procurement, maintenance and replacement of construction products over the building's lifetime.

In addition to climate change, there are several other embodied environmental impacts associated with construction products and the processes that occur during and after construction that should be considered during design, for example corporate social responsibility and other regulatory obligations.