Arbejdsrapport fra Miljøstyrelsen 25/2006 – Anbefalinger for indarbejdelse af miljøaspekter i produktstandarder

Anbefalinger for indarbejdelse af miljøaspekter i produktstandarder

Summary and conclusions

Objective
Background
Vision
Principles
Recommendations

Objective

The objective of this report is to give general recommendations regarding Danish measures for inclusion of environmental aspects in product standards – both at the Danish and the international level.

The report is accompanied by a guideline for participants in standardisation work on the inclusion of environmental aspects in product standards.

Background

The European standardisation organisations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI publish around 1,200 standards per year. Even though both the EU and CEN have expressed wishes to include environmental aspects in standards, there is still a long way to go before this becomes a reality in all relevant cases. In practice, CEN’s environmental checklist, which was intended as a mandatory tool for screening of environmental aspects in the initial phase of new standardisation work, is only used by a few committees. Likewise, CEN’s Environmental Help Desk, which was intended to assist the committees in including environmental aspects, has not been allocated many resources.

In Denmark a number of measures have been taken, but there is still a need to further communicate the experience within certain sectors. Furthermore, it seems that the Danish participants in the standardisation work – including Danish companies – are not making full use of the possibilities in including environmental aspects in standardisation.

Vision

The vision of this report is for environmental aspects to be included in all relevant product standards in order for the standards to contribute to sustainable development.

Principles

Implementation of the recommendations in this report should be based on voluntary actions, be user-centered, user-financed and based on co-operation across sectors.

The following environmental principles should form the basis of the work:

Focus on the most important environmental aspects
Cost-effective environmental measures
Environmental lifecycle considerations

Recommendations

The following activities are recommended:

Collection and consolidation of the existing work for inclusion of environmental aspects.
Building capacity at relevant interest organisations that does not already have capacity to include environmental aspects in product standards.
Development of simple tools for environmental assessment of products for users who are not environmental experts.
Disseminating experience and tools to participants in standardisation work.

As for the organisation of this work, it is recommended that Danish Standards “Fagudvalg for Miljø” (horizontal environmental committee) assume lead responsibility for implementing the recommendations in co-operation with other interested parties.