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European Com­mis­sion starts envir­on­ment­al foot­print pilots

05.07.2013

This ini­tial three year pilot phase is to achieve the fol­low­ing goals:

  • Devol­op­ment of product group-spe­cif­ic rules (Product Envir­on­ment­al Foot­print Cat­egory Rules – PEFCRs), and devel­op­ment of per­form­ance benchmarks;
  • Test­ing of dif­fer­ent com­pli­ance and veri­fic­a­tion sys­tems, in order to set up and val­id­ate adequate, effect­ive and effi­cient com­pli­ance and veri­fic­a­tion systems.
  • Test­ing of dif­fer­ent busi­ness-to-busi­ness and busi­ness-to-con­sumer com­mu­nic­a­tion vehicles for Product Envir­on­ment­al Foot­print inform­a­tion in col­lab­or­a­tion with stakeholders.
In gen­er­al, European Bioplastics wel­comes the EC’s ini­ti­at­ive to cre­ate a com­mon tool for sus­tain­ab­il­ity assess­ment of products. How­ever, the PEF-approach and pro­cess gen­er­ate some rel­ev­ant questions: 
  • Will envir­on­ment­al foot­print­ing fun­da­ment­ally change cur­rent envir­on­ment­al cor­por­ate report­ing practise?
  • What are the most crit­ic­al issues regard­ing the pilots?
  • What are the pros and cons for participating?
With regard to the first ques­tion, PEF is a Life Cycle Assess­ment (LCA) based meth­od apply­ing a multi-cri­ter­ia meas­ure for cal­cu­lat­ing the envir­on­ment­al per­form­ance of a product. Espe­cially for smal­ler and medi­um sized enter­prises (SMEs) the con­duct of a full LCA is budget­wise and time­wise a chal­lenge. If PEF aspires to be the one assess­ment tool in Europe, a diver­si­fied approach – account­ing for the lim­ited range of action of SMEs com­pared to glob­ally act­ive com­pan­ies – should be cre­ated.

Crit­ic­al issues regard­ing the pilots

With regard to the cal­cu­la­tion pro­cess, the exclu­sion of life cycle stages is pos­sible. Fur­ther­more, the selec­tion and weight­ing of impact cat­egor­ies needs to be expli­citely addressed and cal­cu­la­tion prin­ciples need to be fixed (e.g. EoL equa­tion). Focus­sing on the pilot res­ults, a vehicle of com­mu­nic­a­tion needs to be defined (e.g. a label). Product cat­egor­ies (Product Cat­egory Rules = PCR) need to be developed dur­ing the pilots, which will then be used as stand­ard in upcom­ing EC policies. The PCRs pro­cess developed in the pilots will be used as blue­print for the roll-out of PCR devel­op­ment in Europe.

Pros and cons for participation

There are sev­er­al reas­ons to par­ti­cip­ate in the EC’s initiative: 
  • defin­i­tion of product categories,
  • re-eval­u­ation of EoL formula
  • avoid­ance of mis­lead­ing approaches such as input/​output based PEF
  • avoid­ance of com­pet­it­ive dis­ad­vant­ages due to e.g. selec­tion of impact categories
  • defin­i­tion and eval­u­ation of com­mu­nic­a­tion vehicles
  • avoid­ance of com­pet­i­tion driv­en trans­form­a­tion of exist­ing PCRs to PEFCR (Product Envir­on­ment­al Foot­print Cat­egory Rules) document
How­ever, there are also a few points that need to be considered: 
  • Par­ti­cip­a­tion might be inter­preted as con­firm­a­tion of the PEF guides content
  • Tough dead­line to obtain required com­mit­ments (intern­al as well as competitors)
  • Budget / no fund­ing of DG Environment.
Should a com­pany or insti­tu­tion wish to be involved in the con­sulta­tion pro­cess, there is no need to fill out an applic­a­tion at this stage. Once the final decision is taken on which product cat­egor­ies will be addressed in the pilots, inform­a­tion on how to get involved will be pub­lished on the web­site: ec​.europa​.eu/​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​/​e​u​s​s​d​/​s​m​g​p​/​p​r​o​d​u​c​t​_​f​o​o​t​p​r​i​n​t.htm

Timeline:

26 July 2013: Dead­line for applic­a­tions
Septem­ber 2013: Selec­tion of par­ti­cipants com­pleted
Octo­ber-Novem­ber 2013: Start of 1st wave of EF cat­egory rules pilot
April-June 2014 (expec­ted): Start of test­ing veri­fic­a­tion pro­cesses
April 2015 (expec­ted): Start of tests of com­mu­nic­a­tion vehicles Source: European Bioplastics e.V.
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