Miljøprojekt, 1063/2006 - Integrated Supply Chain Information

Integrated Supply Chain Information

Summary and conclusions

Objectives of the study

The present report analyses the possible synergies between the following schemes which all include incentives or obligations to inform stakeholders, customers or the public regarding issues of relevance to health or environmental protection:

The Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive (Council Directive 96/91/EC) (IPPC)
The Safety Data Sheet Directive (Dir. 2001/58/EC) (SDS)
The EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (Reg. 761/2001/EC) (EMAS)
The Revised Community Eco-label Award Scheme (Reg. 1980/2000/EC) (EU Eco-label)
Member states initiatives regarding Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) based on ISO 14.025 (type III labelling)

There are other schemes applied on a global or regional scale, e.g. the EU energy label, the ISO environmental management standard (ISO 14.001), and the ISO type II standard regarding environmental self-declarations (ISO 14.024). The above 5 schemes have been selected as they are identified as being among the most important voluntary tools in Commission Green Paper for Integrated Product Policy and Commission Announcement on IPP (2003) (EMAS, Eco-label, EPD) or is obligatory for many European enterprises (IPPC, SDS).

The overall scope of the analysis is to:

Identify barriers for achieving a better co-ordination of the 5 schemes
Identify benefits for the users of a further integration
Suggest measures for an improved synergy and co-ordination

A work hypothesis regarding how the flow of information may be organised in an integrated product information system is out-lined in the figure below.

Method of analysis

The analysis is organised as a “two-factor” comparison between those combinations of tools, where an improved coordination seems most beneficial and where some barriers for an increased coordination are present today:

IPPC and EMAS (chapter 4),
EMAS and Eco-label (chapter 5),
Eco-label and EPD (chapter 6) and
Eco-label and SDS (chapter 7).

Other combinations, which are relevant to study, have been handled briefly in chapter 4-6 (e.g. the analysis of IPPC and EMAS also discusses the contribution of IPPC data reporting in relation to Eco-labels).

A horizontal analysis of data and verification requirements for all systems and how synergy may be improved are made in chapter 8, and overall conclusions and recommendations are presented in chapter 9.

The 5 different schemes are briefly outlined in chapter 3 for readers not familiar with the schemes.

Recommendations

18 distinct recommendations are made based on the study. The main recommendations are:

An integrated environmental and health communication system should be developed and agreed upon in EU. As a first step, a strategy for how to develop, implement and manage an “Integrated product chain environmental and health communication system” should be elaborated.
A common life cycle analysis (LCA) framework should be established at community level further detailing the ISO standard 14.040. This “EU-standard” should be applied for elaboration of eco-label background documents for criteria settings, for Product Category Rules for EPD's and for the further development of the product focus in EMAS.
The Commission should initiate working for the preparation of an EU regulation for environmental product declarations (EPD's) based on the eco-label and EMAS regulatory framework
Mechanisms should be established to promote the formal coordination between the schemes at both national and Community level. The EU Competent bodies for EMAS and Eco-labels (and EPD) should merge into one single body to promote coherence between the schemes
A common framework for verification of environmental and health information systems should be established covering the voluntary tools Eco-labels, EMAS and EPD (if established). The stringency of compliance control of the obligatory instruments IPPC and SDS should be similar to the stringency of the third party verification of voluntary tools.
Guidelines and other background documents elaborated for the purpose of a single scheme should be made available for users of other relevant schemes.

The results

The results of the analysis clearly document the need for a stronger coordination of information systems with similar target groups and objectives. Highest priority should be given to a stronger coordination of Eco-labels, EMAS and EPD's, but also the IPPC data collection and the Safety Data Sheet have many aspects, which should be co-ordinated with the three other schemes. Most of the non-consistencies identified are presumably due to low or missing coordination between sectors responsible for the establishment and management of the schemes.

There are obvious benefits for the stakeholders – both those applying the schemes (enterprises) and those receiving the information (down stream users, authorities and consumers). Perhaps one of the most important benefits is the maintenance of credibility and thus the future applicability and success of the systems.

The primary targets for increased coordination may be subdivided into

framework and guidelines,
data collection, management and reporting and
verification.

Eco-label criteria are based on life cycle thinking – but the way of thinking may vary considerably between various product assessments partly due to the lack of appropriate requirements and guidelines. Some member countries are in the process of establishing their own LCA-based national EPD schemes (e.g. Italy, Sweden and Denmark), which to some extend is co-ordinated informally. The LCA methodology used is based on an ISO standard, but the standard allows considerable degrees of freedom, which may lead to significant differences and thus difficulties of interpretation and comparison between the established systems. There is a need for a common EU defined LCA framework to be applied for LCA based assessments and information systems.

An Environmental Product Declaration system may fulfil the need of communicating LCA based data in the product chain. An EPD may deliver LCA based data from the company to its suppliers and professional customers. EPD may therefore link together Eco-labels (target group: the consumers) and EMAS (target group: enterprises) and may be the system needed for EMAS to further develop into an environmental product management system (EMAS II). Especially EPD's and eco-labels should make use of the same LCA framework to facilitate the use of Product Category Rules (PCR) in the establishment of eco-label criteria and vice versa.

In all schemes, a number of documents are elaborated to support the implementation, e.g. background reports and criteria documents for the eco-label; BREF documents for identification of best available cleaner technology (IPPC), guidance documents for environmental management (EMAS), and PCR documents for EPD. These documents - although targeted a specific scheme - are valuable for all IPPC, EMAS, EPD and eco-label users and should therefore be disseminated to a broader user group, i.e. by elaboration and distribution of easy-to-read summaries of the documents to the users or target groups of all schemes.

By way of illustration it is the general impression, that much more companies use eco-label criteria as bench markers for their environmental management compared to the number actually holding a license for the label. As the overall objective of the label is to increase the environmental performance of goods and services, the former use should be promoted in parallel to promoting the labelling of products.

The extent and quality of the third party verification of the various systems is presently not coherent. Systems with a weak independent verification may not be regarded as credible by the user of the system. Presently, the SDS scheme is presumably the weakest verified system, as only a retrospective spot-check is performed. But also the third party verification system of Eco-labels is problematic as there has been established no common requirements and guidelines for the verification performed by the various national verification bodies.The basis for the establishment of a credible common third party verification system may be EMAS, as it contains all requirements and guidelines for certification and accreditation.

An accredited certification system ensures that the same level of verification is performed in all member countries and thus that the obligations are the same for the users achieving and maintaining licences.

The management of the various schemes is placed at different national agencies or sectors. Also at EU level each scheme has its own competent body forum. There are no established mechanisms for coordination at management level neither at national nor at EU-level. To achieve a coherent EMAS, Eco-label and EPD system one competent body at EU-level should be given the responsibility for the maintenance and promotion of the schemes.