Working report 27/2006 – Guidelines for the Inclusion of Environmental Aspects in Product Standards – 4 How can Product Standards reduce Environmental Impacts

This chapter gives an overview of the connection between product and environment and various methodologies to reduce a product’s environmental impact. The objective of the chapter is to give those working with product standards the necessary tools to include environmental aspects in their standardisation work.

4.1 Methodologies for the reduction of environmental impacts

One of the main principles in environmental work with products is to reduce the overall negative environmental impacts connected to the product rather than moving the negative environmental effects from one phase in the life cycle to another. It is, therefore, important that one makes use of a product life cycle when handling environmental questions related to a product.

There are many ways of reducing the negative environmental impacts of a product. One can broadly divide the methodologies for environmental improvement up in the following way:

Furthermore, a reduced consumption of products in general will reduce the impact on the environment.

The various ways of reducing environmental impacts are discussed below. A new standard under development, ISO 14062 “Environmental Management – Integrating environmental aspects into product design and development”, provides guidelines to how one can include environmental considerations into the product development phase.

4.2 Optimised process control

Production processes are defined according to product specifications and are generally optimised along economic production parameters such as production speed, use of raw materials and time of delivery. Production processes are also adjusted so that they remain within environmental requirements.

When production specifications change - either to maintain customer satisfaction or due to new standards being introduced – the production processes often change as well. On such occasions it can be advantageous to review opportunities for optimising the production process with respect to both environmental and economic factors.

It is, for example, important to ensure that the use of raw materials, subsidiary materials and energy consumption are optimised and that wastage is kept to a minimum. Most production processes today are automated or semi-automated so optimisation generally occurs in the use of materials. This also includes a reduction in faulty production, which will also decrease wastage.

It does not often occur that standards directly affect production processes, but standards issue requirements to products they can indirectly lead to changes in production processes and thereby lead to production process optimisation.

The product standard on surface treatment of steel constructions (EN/ISO 12944-5 Corrosion protection of steel structures by protective paint systems - Part 5: Protective paint systems) discusses a large number of surface treatments that all comply with the standard's requirements for durability, but which all have various economic, technical and environmental consequences associated with the painting process; e.g. both water-based and organic solvent-based products, which require different painting methods, drying processes and which have very different environmental consequences are discussed. Here it should be considered to optimize the technical and economic aspects in conjunction with the environmental aspects, which typically will result in application of the water-based painting systems.

It is, however, important in all such assessments that life cycle thinking is established so that all economic assessments of the production processes takes into account all environmental costs during production.

4.3 Optimised construction

There are many environmental advantages to be gained through resource optimisation in construction work as the following example in Fig. 4.2 indicates.

1. Design of masonry structures

"Design of Masonry Structures Standard EC 6" (ENV 1996-1-1) is under development and will describe the technical and construction requirements for project planning, construction and implementation of masonry. EC 6 has been under development for 7 years and should be completed in 2004 after which it will be the only recognized standard on the subject.

2. Environmental aspects

The most important environmental aspect is reducing the use of materials in masonry. A reduced consumption of materials will in turn reduce the use of primary resources (clay, chalk, sand etc.), lower the energy consumption, reduced discharge etc.

The aim has been to include the results of a continuing optimisation of masonry constructions and materials. This optimization is necessary in order to ensure masonry's economic and quality competitiveness with other building materials, but this process also includes a number of environmental improvements.

3. Practical examples

It would be best to ensure that the safety standards of all constructions and construction materials are the same. This has led to standards for the dimensioning of beams, which was developed as a national parameter. In practice this means that when the values are known it leads to their use in project planning and therefore safer and more efficient - and resource efficient - buildings are constructed.

In EC 6 it is possible to calculate masonry's adherence and tensile strength in bending so that it can be shown whether masonry has sufficient bearing capacity and if steel pillars are necessary.

In some cases masonry constructions are built of a front wall and a back wall held together by wire bindings. The bearing capacity of the construction is determined by the individual wall's thickness and rigidity. Until 2002 EC 6 only contained a calculating formula that took the individual subsidiary wall's thickness into account. In other words both subsidiary walls were considered to have the same rigidity. If different materials were used in each wall then the construction would either be over dimensioned or under dimensioned leading to either a waste of resources or a safety hazard. A model has now been introduced that includes both rigidity and thickness, which allows for the correct dimensioning of each wall and, therefore, the optimisation of both safety and environmental aspects. The possibility of using different materials in subsidiary walls means more flexibility in the planning of constructions.

4.4 Substitution of environmentally hazardous substances

Substitution occurs for many different reasons e.g. production technology, customer pressure or safety reasons, but it can also occur for environmental reasons.

For example, substituting environmentally harmful substances in a product with less hazardous substances can result in reduced discharge of environmentally hazardous substances to the environment. In the cases where there are high costs or taxes are connected to the use or disposal of hazardous waste water, solid waste or flue gas, then substitution can both have economic as well as environmental advantages.

The European Standard for Admixes in Concrete, EN 934-2 allows for the use of superplastifying substances, which contain formaldehyde. This is an environmentally hazardous substance. As other products on the market have the same effect, but do not contain formaldehyde it could be advantageous to specify that formaldehyde be substituted by less hazardous substances.
"ISO 12944-5 Corrosion protection of steel structures by protective paint systems - Part 5: Protective paint systems" discusses the use of different paints and application techniques and mentions a number of substances that are effective in different forms of corrosion prevention.

For example the use of paints with PVC and epoxyester as a binding agent, volatile organic compounds and pigments containing tin are all discussed. All these substances are problematic either for the environment or in the workplace, yet the standard only includes peripheral references to requirements for the labeling of the paints for occupational safety reasons. The standard is under revision and it has been recommended that environmental considerations should be taken into account in order to substitute these hazardous substances.

The standard mentions both water-based paints and paints based on organic solvents. It is, therefore, already possible to choose between different types of solvents and, on this basis, choose the environmentally most appropriate

4.5 Include recycling in the product

Most products become a waste product sooner or later, which has to be handled in a responsible fashion. The deposition of refuse has become more complicated and expensive over the years. This is due to the environmental problems involved in depositing refuse on landfills, lack of space for refuse handling and capacity problems at refuse handling plants. In some cases there is also a resource shortage as certain raw materials become scarce.

Due to this it is sensible, both environmentally and economically, to consider whether the product can be recycled when disposed of or whether the existing recycling can be expanded.

Planning increased recycling is best carried out in the product development phase e.g. one can increase the possibility of recycling by avoiding laminants and composite materials. Furthermore the labelling of individual components can lead to increased recycling. Fig. 4.4 gives a few examples of the inclusion of recycling in product development.

Many car factories label the individual components so that it is easier to identify the various materials when the car is scrapped. There is currently work being done on ensuring that insulating foam and the steel chassis in fridges are more easily separated after use. Similar projects are underway in the electronics sector.
A way of making concrete more environmentally friendly is to include more reactive waste products from other industries such as flue ash from power stations and sediment from sewage plants. As these waste products often include heavy metals this may lead to problems when the structure is demolished, as the cement may not be recyclable. Crushed cement is often used as a filling material or as a bearing layer, and leaching of the heavy metals may occur. It is, therefore, important to think all aspects through using a long-term perspective before recommending recycling.
Eco-design for reuse. In connection with the EU directive on the collection of discarded electronic and electrical apparatus a computer based tool, Eco-design, has been developed. Eco-design makes it easier for product developers to consider deposition and, therefore, recycling in the design phase. An eco-design guide for electronics can be downloaded at www.ecodesignguide.dk

4.6 The use of recycled materials

Another possibility for improving a product’s environmental profile is by using recycled materials instead of new raw materials. This is based on the presumption that there are clear environmental advantages in doing this, although this is not always the case.

There are a number of examples on environmentally and financially appropriate examples of use of materials with content of recyclable materials, e.g. the use of recyclable fibres in the manufacture of cardboard boxes. In this case a virtually a closed cycle exists as most cardboard boxes have a high percentage of recycled fibres (often over 90%) and many of the boxes are collected for recycling again. Other examples are newspapers, egg boxes, beer and soft drink bottles, and steel reinforcements amongst others.

In the building sector a widespread recycling of materials takes place, e.g. large amounts of flue ash (a waste product from flue gas cleaning filters in power stations, fired by pulverised coal) and micro silica (a waste product from flue gas filters used in the production of ferrosilicium and silicium metals) are added to concrete. Guidelines for using these products appear in the European product standard EN 206-1 for concrete.

4.7 Cleaning of discharge

The above-mentioned methodologies for improving a product’s environmental profile are all preventative and are aimed at the product design phase. This is a phase in which product standards can have a large influence on the environmental impact of the product.

There are other methods to ensure a product’s environmental profile improves. This includes purification/cleaning measures such as installations for the cleaning of flue gas and wastewater that is produced during production. An example of this is mentioned below in Fig. 4.6.