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Guidelines for the Inclusion of Environmental Aspects in Product Standards

3 Tools for Assessing the Environment

• 3.1 Product-oriented environmental strategy
• 3.2 Methodologies for life cycle assessments
  • 3.2.1 ISO's LCA-standards
  • 3.2.2 Computer-based LCA Tools
  • 3.2.3 Environmental Indicators
  • 3.2.4 BEAT
• 3.3 Methodologies for environmental labelling
• 3.4 Methodologies for environmental declarations

For many years environmental management focused on reducing environmental impacts from production e.g. setting limits for discharges of wastewater from industry as well as the introduction of cleaner technology. During the 1990’ies the focus has shifted to the products in a product-oriented strategy. Some of the topics discussed and developed in product-oriented strategies are:

• The development of methodologies for the environmental assessment of products, amongst others life cycle assessments (LCA)
• Environmental labelling and methodologies for this
• Environmental declaration of contents and methodologies for this.

All of these are important tools for making products more environmentally friendly and can, therefore, also be useful when including environmental aspects in product standards.

This chapter starts by introducing product-oriented environmental strategy followed by a discussion of the tools used for life cycle assessments (LCA), environmental labelling and environmental declaration of products.

3.1 Product-oriented environmental strategy

Traditionally preventative environmental measures have been concentrated on production processes in industry by regulating discharges from companies and introducing cleaner technology.

Lately, the focus has shifted to product-oriented environmental strategies. In other words working on reducing the environmental impact of the product throughout its entire life cycle from the extraction of raw materials to deposition of the product.

The EU Commission presented a green paper in 2001 on Integrated Product Policy (IPP). The green paper was discussed in the EU parliament, the Council of Ministers and interested and affected parties, which resulted in a white paper being published in 2002. The white paper established the UE Commission’s strategy on the subject (Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: “Integrated Product Policy – Building on Environmental Life-Cycle Thinking” COM (2003) 302 final).

The strategy is built on the following five key principles:

• Promotion of life-cycle thinking
• Working with the market
• Stakeholder involvement
• Continuous improvement of products’ environmental performance
• Use of a variety of policy instruments.

The strategy will be implemented through the establishment of a framework for the continuous environmental improvement of products, which includes:

• The use of taxes and subsidies to promote the production of environmentally friendly products
• Voluntary agreements and standardisations
• The integration of environmental aspects into the European standardisation process
• The greening of public procurement policy
• Making life-cycle information and interpretative tools available
• Ensure the inclusion of IPP in environmental management systems (EMAS etc.)
• Product design obligations
• Promote consumer information on environmentally friendly products, including environmental labelling etc.

3.2 Methodologies for life cycle assessments

Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are an important element in product-oriented environmental work and in the IPP as LCA is a tool for determining the environmental impacts of a product and thus identifying ways to reduce these. LCA can also be used to develop eco-labels and environmental declarations of products, and thereby help the consumer make a more environmentally informed choice of product.

Many initiatives have been taken to clarify LCA:

• ISO has published a series of standards on how LCA should be carried out
• CEN has developed an environmental checklist for standards
• Many countries, organisations and companies have developed computer-based tools to carry out LCA’s
• Danish Building and Urban Research Institute has developed a computer-based tool for environmental assessment tool for building and construction materials, building parts and buildings (BEAT).

The individual methodologies are discussed briefly in the following sections.

3.2.1 ISO’s LCA-standards

During the 1990’ies ISO approved a series of environmental standards viz. the ISO 14000 series. A section of the standards include a description of how LCA’s should be carried out. This sub-section was developed from 1997 – 2000 and makes up the ISO 14040 series.

The series consists of the following four standards: Life Cycle Assessments

• ISO 14040 Life Cycle Assessments - Goal and scope
• ISO 14041 Life Cycle Assessments - Life Cycle Inventory Analysis
• ISO 14042 Life Cycle Assessments - Life Cycle Impact Assessment
• ISO 14043 Life Cycle Assessments - Life Cycle Interpretation

ISO 14040 gives instructions on how to define the aim and scope of a LCA in order to clearly define the objective of the LCA and which products and aspects it encompasses. The standard also gives a step-by-step account of what a LCA should include.

ISO 14041 gives guidelines on how to carry out an inventory of a products life cycle with inputs and outputs etc.

ISO 14042 provides guidelines for determining environmental impacts of the relevant inputs and outputs.

ISO 14043 gives instructions on how the results of the inventory and the determination of the impacts should be interpreted and how quality controls should be carried out.

ISO 14048 encompasses the format of data compilation and exchange of data.

Fig. 3.1 below shows an updated list of standards within the ISO 14000 series.

ISO have since published ISO Guide 64 (DS/INF 118:1997), which contains a description of the connection between product standards, product development and a product’s environmental impact during their entire life cycle.

Figure 3.1 Final Adopted International Standard in the ISO 14000 Family

3.2.2 Computer-based LCA Tools

During the 1990’ies a number of countries, including Denmark and the Netherlands, developed computer-based LCA methodologies for determining a product’s or activity’s impact on the environment during its entire life cycle. The Danish system is called Environmental Development of Industrial Products (EDIP).

Whilst CEN’s environmental checklist is a screening methodology the computer-based LCA methodologies can give very detailed information on a product’s environmental impact. This is, however, dependant on the data input the computer programme it is fed with.

The LCA tools currently available require a great deal of training of the user, but there are currently new, user-friendlier tools under development.

3.2.3 Environmental Indicators

Environmental indicators are used in order to measure a company’s or an activity’s environmental performance. Environmental indicators are central environmental parameters that are associated with a certain activity e.g. an indicator can be the discharge (in kg per year) of an environmentally hazardous substance during production. By following the development of an environmental indicator, such as the amount of hazardous substance discharged (in kg per year), and comparing this with the production process, such as the number of units manufactured, one can determine whether the environmental performance of a production process (in kg per product) is improving or becoming worse.

ISO 14031 and 14032 gives guidelines on how to construct a system that can determine a company’s environmental performance.

3.2.4 BEAT

BEAT (Building Environment Assessment Tool) is a computer programme that assesses the environmental impact of building materials, building products and buildings. BEAT is based on the EDIP-method, but it can be used in other LCA-methodologies.

BEAT is made up of three parts:

• a database with information on energy sources, means of transport, products, building materials and buildings.
• a user-base that allows the user to add, update and delete data in the database.
• a computation part that allows the user to make calculations for products, building materials and buildings and print the results as input/output tables or as environmental profiles.

BEAT also includes a special module for determining environmental declarations for building products, a module that supports the environmental classification and declaration of buildings as well as a module for the simplified representation of buildings, which allows for BEAT to be used in the initial phases of project development to carry out environmental mapping and assessment of projects on the drawing board. BEAT is available in Danish, English, German, French and Spanish.

In principle BEAT can be used for the environmental assessment of all products, but BEAT is currently designed especially for the building sector. More information on BEAT can be found at www.by-og-byg.dk.

3.3 Methodologies for environmental labelling

A number of environmental labels already exist such as the EU-flower, the Nordic Swan Label and the German Blue Angel (see Fig. 3.2 below). All these environmental labels have the objective of assisting the consumer make a more environmentally friendly choice of products and are, in principle, based on product LCA’s.

Environmental labels are built on the principle that products within a given category that meet a series of environmental requirements can be awarded the label. The environmental requirements are determined by a committee, which ensures that some products on the market already can be awarded the environmental label, while others cannot. In this way the consumer has the opportunity of choosing the environmentally best products. This will, hopefully, have an effect on product development in that producers will change their products and/or their production processes in order to reduce environmental impacts.

Environmental labels give the producer a simple message; that products with the eco-label are less environmentally harmful than those without the label, though there are cases whereby producers of unlabelled products choose not to have their products labelled despite the fact that they meet all requirements for obtaining the label.

There is a problem with the labelling system in that consumers cannot see which products are the most environmentally friendly amongst the labelled products.

More information on the Nordic Swan Label can be found at www.svanen.nu, Blue Angel at www.blauer-engel.de and the EU-flower at http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/ecolabel/index.htm.

ISO is currently developing standards for environmental labels and the standardisation of products. The ISO 14020 series is being used for this purpose.

Figure 3.2: Examples of three European environmental labels: the EU-flower, the Nordic Swan and the German Blaue Engel

3.4 Methodologies for environmental declarations

Environmental declarations are a more comprehensive description of a product’s environmental impact during its entire life cycle. An environmental declaration usually includes an environmental profile of the product, which shows its impact on various environmental parameters.

Work is being done on standardising environmental declarations in order to produce a uniform and user-friendly declaration of a product’s environmental impact.

ISO is currently developing standards for environmental declarations. These will be part of ISO 14020, which also includes eco-labelling.

A proposal for guidelines on environmental declarations for building materials has been developed in Denmark, which is supported by BEAT (see section 3.2.4). In early 2004 a general Danish project on environmental declarations was started, to be implemented by Danish Standards Association (Dansk Standard) and with assistance from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (Miljøstyrelsen).

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Version 1.0 August 2006, © Danish Environmental Protection Agency