CORREGGIO — The next time a construction company, a furniture maker, or a textile mill wants to prove its product is genuinely greener than a competitor’s, a 35-year-old Italian engineer will be the one setting the rules for how that proof is measured. Elia Rillo has been elected chair of the Technical Committee of EPD International. The organization runs the world’s primary registry for Environmental Product Declarations — essentially, standardized nutrition labels for industrial goods, except they track carbon emissions, water use, and resource depletion instead of calories and fat.
The committee he now leads decides the technical criteria that determine whether a declaration is valid or worthless. That authority carries real weight.
In Europe, public procurement contracts increasingly require EPD certification. A steel beam without one can lose a bid for a bridge project. A floor tile without one can be locked out of a school renovation.
The Technical Committee’s decisions shape which products get access to those markets and which do not. Rillo’s path to the chair is not a story of sudden promotion.
He graduated in Energy and Nuclear Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin. Then he spent more than ten years at Studio Fieschi, a firm that specializes in Life Cycle Assessment — the methodology that underpins every EPD. Life Cycle Assessment tracks environmental effects from raw material extraction through manufacturing, transport, use, and disposal.
It is painstaking, data-intensive work. Rillo did it for a decade. That experience put him in a small group of people who understand both the science and the practical business of environmental reporting.
The European Community selected him for sustainability assessment work on products and services, a recognition that came when he was relatively young. He joined the EPD International Technical Committee in 2025.
He was elected its chair at the start of 2026. The timing matters. Environmental Product Declarations are not a niche tool anymore.
They are becoming a default requirement in supply chains across Europe. Companies that once treated sustainability as a marketing exercise now face real demands for verifiable data.
The EPD system provides that verification. But the system only works if the technical rules are rigorous enough to prevent greenwashing and practical enough that businesses can actually comply. That balance is the committee’s job.
Rillo’s role is to manage it. His background suggests a bias toward rigor. At Studio Fieschi, his work involved measuring environmental impacts for companies and entire industrial supply chains, then helping them define sustainability strategies based on scientific data.
That is not the same as helping them draft press releases. It is the difference between producing a number that can be audited and producing a claim that sounds good.
The stakes are concrete. If the Technical Committee sets standards too loosely, EPDs lose credibility and the entire certification scheme becomes another label consumers ignore. If the committee sets standards too tightly, smaller companies — the ones that cannot afford full-time sustainability staff — get priced out of certification and locked out of markets.
Rillo now sits at that intersection. He holds a graduate degree in Energy and Nuclear Engineering.
He has a decade of hands-on work in Life Cycle Assessment. He was picked by the European Community for high-level assessment work. And he was elected by his peers on the Technical Committee, people who know the technical details well enough to judge his competence.
The election is, in the statement’s words, international recognition of his work. But recognition is not the point. The point is what happens next — which standards get set, which methodologies get approved, and which products get the certification that lets them compete in a market that increasingly demands proof.
