Are you searching for sustainable acoustic panels that not only improve sound quality but also minimise environmental impact? In this blog, we compare five popular acoustic panels to determine which is the most environmentally friendly. We’ll focus on three key metrics: Global Warming Potential (GWP), circularity, and ecosystem impact. These factors provide a holistic view of each product’s environmental profile, helping you make informed choices for your projects.
Keywords: acoustic panels, global warming potential, environmental profile, sustainable building materials
The Importance of Global Warming Potential (GWP), Ecosystem Impact and Circularity
When assessing the environmental performance of building materials, three aspects are critical:
Global Warming Potential (GWP): This measures the greenhouse gas emissions a product contributes throughout its life cycle, expressed in CO₂ equivalents. It’s a key metric in understanding a product’s climate impact.
Ecosystem Impact: Beyond carbon emissions, we also need to consider the broader environmental effects, such as water use, ozone depletion, and resource depletion.
Circularity: This evaluates how sustainable a product is based on its use of renewable or recycled materials, energy efficiency during production, and longevity.
Image 1. The Environmental Profile of a product
In this comparison, we used third-party verified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to assess these metrics. Of course, examining all of these aspects from EPD-data would typically require a lot of number crunching, but luckily Materialisting has done that already, so we get to focus on the fun part. Let’s dive into how five acoustic panels perform on these environmental factors. These five products for this comparison were selected from among the 300+ acoustic panels found on the Materialisting platform.
Image 2. The five acoustic panels selected for the comparison
Trademark | Name of product | Material | Thickness |
Ecophon | Ecophon Industry Modus TAL (30) | Glass wool | 30 mm |
Rockfon | Rockfon Color All A 20 | Stone wool | 20 mm |
Ecophon | Ecophon Focus A, Carbon Low | Glass wool | 20 mm |
Knauf | TOPIQ Prime - Tegular | Stone wool | 15 mm |
Beiyang Building Material | Beiyang Acoustic Panel | Glass wool | NA |
These panels differ in material and thickness, but all are commonly used in real-life applications, even though they may vary in price (stone wool is generally more expensive than glass wool). Now, let's set some benchmarks to help compare their environmental impact.
Global Warming Potential (GWP)
Setting Benchmarks
To evaluate the sustainability of these products, it’s useful to compare their GWP values against national benchmarks. In this case, we’ve used data from Finland’s SYKE database (co2data.fi), which offers conservative values for acoustic panels:
Stone wool insulation: 3.42 kgCO₂e/m²
Glass wool insulation: 2.95 kgCO₂e/m² for a 20mm product
Ideally, we’re looking for products with significantly lower emissions than these benchmarks. Now, let's compare the products based on their GWP.
Discarding an outlier producing over 10 times more carbon emissions than other acoustic panels
Image 3. The data has two outliers which were removed from further comparison
When looking at the five products, we see two outliers. The first product (Ecophon Industry Modus Tal) has an EPD which has been done using the older 15804+A1 EPD standard. This standard does not consider all of the same environmental aspects as the newer 15804+A2 EPD standard, so we’ll want to drop this product out of further comparison. We could do this using Materialisting Advanced Filters, allowing us to examine only those products that are done according to a certain standard, but since we already have the product in our comparison, we’ll remove it manually.
The second outlier of the group is the fifth product (by Beiyang Building Material). This product is an outlier having a GWP of over 10 times higher than the most environmentally friendly products, and 5 times higher than the benchmark values. The main reason for this high GWP value is that the EPD calculations for this acoustic panel have been made using China’s energy mix, which continues to be highly reliant on very polluting coal.
It’s good to note that the GWP of this product is not high merely because it is produced far away. After all, the GWP from transportation (the A4 stage) is only 1.2 kgco2eq, which is under 8% of the total GWP-emissions. So if a manufacturer uses clean production methods, even products from far away can beat benchmark values. However, that is not the case in the product under comparison, so we’ll remove it from further comparison.
Comparing Global Warming Potential (GWP): A Key Metric for Climate Impact
Image 4. Two of the acoustic panels show very low values for Global Warming Potential
When assessing the sustainability of building materials, Global Warming Potential (GWP) provides a critical insight into their contribution to climate change. GWP measures the overall greenhouse gas emissions associated with a product over its lifecycle, expressed in kilograms of CO₂ equivalent. Among the three products under review,
Rockfon Color All A 20 and Ecophon Focus A, Carbon Low stand out for their relatively low GWP values, both registering under 2 kg CO₂e per square meter, significantly lower than the benchmark values.
TOPIQ Prime – Tegular presents a much higher GWP of 3.79 kg CO₂e per square meter, even surpassing the benchmark. This significant difference is most likely attributed to less efficient production practices and a smaller proportion of renewable energy used.
In summary, Ecophon Focus A Carbon Low and Rockfon Color All A 20 are the clear winners when considering GWP, making them the best choices for low-carbon building projects.
Energy Mix: The Role of Renewable Energy in Production
A key factor that often goes unnoticed in sustainability assessments is the energy mix used during production. Even if a product incorporates renewable or recycled materials, its environmental impact can remain substantial if the production relies heavily on non-renewable, fossil-based energy sources.
Image 5. The energy-mix between the three acoustic panels shows a lot of variance
The energy mix of Ecophon Focus A, Carbon Low clearly distinguishes it from the other two products. With 35% of the energy used in its production coming from renewable sources, Ecophon Focus A benefits from a cleaner energy mix. This reliance on renewable energy helps reduce its overall GWP, making it a particularly attractive option for projects prioritizing low-carbon materials.
Rockfon Color All A 20 utilizes 18% renewable energy in its production process. While this is an improvement compared to traditional energy mixes, it still reflects a moderate reliance on non-renewable sources, which contributes to its overall carbon footprint. The relatively low GWP of Rockfon, despite this lower renewable energy usage, suggests that material efficiency and the use of renewable resources in the product composition help mitigate its climate impact.
TOPIQ Prime - Tegular has a similar energy mix as Color All A 20, with 16% of the energy used in its production coming from renewable sources. This low reliance on clean energy, combined with the high-energy demands of stone wool production, explains its significantly higher GWP compared to the other two products. This makes TOPIQ Prime a less favourable option for projects with stringent environmental standards, as the energy-intensive production process amplifies its overall emissions. By changing the energy mix of its production, Knauf’s TOPIQ Prime - Tegula could be back in the race.
Longevity of Acoustic Panels: How Glass Wool and Stone Wool Perform Over Time
Longevity is a key factor of circularity, because the longer the product lasts, the less frequently it needs to be replaced. When considering the service life of acoustic panels made from glass wool and stone wool, the durability of these materials remains strong. However, certain factors in acoustic applications can influence their longevity. Glass wool acoustic panels typically have a service life ranging from 20 to 50 years, depending on environmental conditions such as humidity and maintenance. In well-maintained indoor environments like offices or schools, these panels can last toward the upper end of that range. In this comparison, all three products have a material service life of 50 years.
Image 6. Stone wool products tend to have a longer material service life than glass wool products, but this is not the case with the products under comparison.
Ecosystem Impact
A Deeper Look into Environmental Performance
To accurately assess the ecosystem impact of building materials, it's essential to evaluate multiple environmental factors, including carbon footprint, acidification, and resource depletion. These factors vary in significance and are not directly comparable, which is why a process of weighting and normalization is necessary.
Weighting assigns different levels of importance to each environmental factor based on their ecological relevance, while normalization scales the results to reference values, allowing for balanced comparisons across categories. This method provides a clearer understanding of the overall environmental impact of materials, translating complex data into actionable insights for sustainable decision-making. Materialisting has done the normalization and weighting process for all products that have relevant data.
Image 7. The ecosystem impact of the product examines impacts beyond global warming potential. Normalized & weighted values enable comparison.
When comparing the ecosystem impact of the three acoustic panels—Color All, Focus A, and TOPIQ Prime—each product has a different footprint on the environment. Color All and Focus A have the lowest total ecosystem impact. While Focus A shows a slightly lower carbon footprint, it has a somewhat higher impact on ozone depletion. TOPIQ Prime, on the other hand, stands out with the highest overall impact, particularly in terms of carbon footprint, acidification, and fossil resource depletion, though its water deprivation potential is relatively low. This comparison highlights how different materials affect the environment, helping guide more sustainable choices.
Circularity
Renewable and Recycled Materials in Focus
Sustainability isn't just about emissions—it’s also about the materials used in production. The more renewable and recycled content a product incorporates, the more circular and eco-friendly it is. In this regard, stone wool and glass wool are different.
Image 8. Comparing the content of renewable and recycled materials in acoustic panels
Both Rockfon Color All A 20 and TOPIQ Prime – Tegular, are made out of stone wool, which iis produced from volcanic rock (basalt) and industrial byproducts like slag. While basalt is non-renewable, it is vastly abundant and has a low likelihood of depletion. Furthermore, stone wool panels can be recycled, as is reflected in the EPDs of both Rockfon Color All A 20 and TOPIQ Prime – Tegular. The high percentage of renewable inputs offsets the otherwise high energy demand in the stone wool production process, ensuring a more favorable overall environmental profile.
Ecophon Focus A, Carbon Low relies on glass wool, which is primarily made from sand but contains a large portion of recycled glass — up to 63% in the case of Ecophon Focus A.. This higher proportion of recycled content is a crucial advantage, as it significantly reduces the demand for virgin raw materials and contributes to lower emissions during production.
The balance between renewable and recycled content is an essential consideration for sustainability. Rockfon’s & Ecophon's emphasis on renewable and recyclable materials makes them strong contenders for eco-conscious projects.
So, which one is the most sustainable acoustic panel?
Ultimately, for projects seeking a balance between low carbon emissions, circularity, and ecosystem impact, Focus A stands out as the most well-rounded option out of the compared acoustic panels. Rockfon Color All A 20 performs also very well, and is a good option for designers who are looking for a rockwool product.
TOPIQ Prime - Tegular, with its higher GWP and lower use of renewable energy, remains a less favourable choice, though combined with a suitable price-point its longevity can be a factor in its favour for long-term building life-cycles.
Final words of this comparison of acoustic panels
We acknowledge that this comparison is not perfect. First, we only compared three out of over 300 acoustic panels available on the Materialisting platform. Second, EPDs are made different. In our comparison we did follow good practices in that we only compared products using the same EPD standard (15804+A2) but still, EPD results can vary due to background databases, Product Category Rules (PCR), cut-off criteria, etc.
However, as we don’t live in a perfect world where the data is perfect, we need to work with what we have. Considering the time pressure that designers have in their work, Materialisting aims to make it as easy as it can get to compare products from a holistic perspective. For more in-depth analysis you can analyse each product’s EPD documents, found on the Materialisting platform.
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Author: Sakari Tolppanen
Edited: Fri Nov 1st, 2024
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