Sustainable products and LCA Tools

Worldwide, environmental awareness has been growing. That means sustainable products are not only good for the environment, but also appealing to customers – and therefore good for your company. 

Many initiatives has been putted in place. In UE one is dedicated to revise the Eco-design Directive and propose additional legislative measures as appropriate, aims to make products placed on the EU market more sustainable.

Consumers, the environment and the climate will benefit from products that are more durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable, and energy efficient. The initiative will also address the presence of harmful chemicals in products such as:

• electronics & ICT equipment
• textiles
• furniture
• steel, cement & chemicals. 

Retailers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain find growing consumer demand for sustainably sourced products. Many work in partnership with their suppliers, both inside and outside the European Union, to introduce environmental and social standards, according to an ITC company survey in the five EU countries. This is the first retail survey of its kind. It covers eight retail product groups: beverages, clothing, computers, food, household and office furniture, mobile phones, printed materials, and toys and games. Commissioned by the European Commission Directorate-General for Trade, the report contains data on consumer demand and retailer sourcing strategies, as well as case studies based on interviews with retailers.

Source UE report “the retail perspective on sourcing policies and consumer demand”  https://www.intracen.org/uploadedFiles/intracenorg/Content/Publications/EU%20Market%20for%20Sustainable%20Products_Report_final_low_res.pdf

• Rising sales: Looking back 85% of retailers report increased sales of sustainable products over the past five years
• Rising sales: Looking forward 92% of retailers expect sales in sustainable products to increase in the next five years
• 96% of retailers interviewed have sustainable sourcing strategies
• 76% of retailers interviewed have committed to sourcing a proportion of their supplies sustainably

The ‘‘European Green Deal”

Is a growth strategy to transform the Society into a fairer and more prosperous society, with a modern, competitive, climate neutral and circular economy. As stated in the Commission’s strategic recovery package.

In response to the dramatic and unprecedented effects of the COVID19 crisis, a collective and cohesive recovery that accelerates the twin green and digital transitions will only strengthen Europe’s competitiveness, resilience and position as a global player.  

Society must invest in protecting and creating jobs and in driving our competitive sustainability by building a fairer, greener and more digital world. We must repair the short-term damage from the crisis in a way that also invests in our long-term future.

The March 2020 the UE Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) provides a future-oriented agenda for achieving a cleaner and more competitive Europe in co-creation with economic actors, citizens and civil society organisations. It contributes to achieving 2030 climate and energy efficiency goals, climate neutrality by 2050 and decoupling economic growth and well-being of EU citizens from environmental and climate impacts while ensuring the longterm competitiveness of the EU and leaving no one behind. It announces a sustainable product policy legislative initiative to make products fit for a climate neutral, resource efficient and circular economy, reduce waste and ensure that the performance of frontrunners in sustainability progressively becomes the norm.  

The initiative will aim to set out the EU policy framework4 necessary to achieve this objective. For this, the scope of the Ecodesign Directive needs to be widened beyond energy related products, and made applicable to the broadest possible range of products. Through this revision and, where necessary, complementary legislative proposals, the Commission will establish sustainability principles and other mechanisms to regulate sustainability-related aspects in a wide range of product related instruments, while continuing to respect the EUs commitments in international trade agreements, including in the World Trade Organization context. This initiative will be developed in close coordination with other initiatives announced in the CEAP, in particular the initiative on empowering consumers for the green transition and the initiative on the substantiation of environmental claims using product and organisational environmental footprint methods. Together these initiatives will seek to establish a coherent policy framework whereby sustainable goods, services and business models become the norm and consumption patterns are more sustainable. 

The Sustainable Product Policy Initiative aims at correcting the following market and regulatory failures:  

1. Product-related externalities are not fully internalised: the linear production and consumption pattern of ’take-make-use-dispose’ does not provide producers with sufficient incentives along the supply chains to make their products more sustainable. The average lifespan of many products has become shorter over the last decades. Many products break too quickly, many cannot be easily and safely reused, repaired or recycled, and many are made for single use only. Furthermore, there are concerns over the environmental impact and working conditions in which materials are sourced and/or products produced.
2. EU initiatives and legislation only partially address sustainability aspects of products, either on a mandatory or voluntary basis. The Ecodesign Directive successfully regulates energy efficiency and some circularity features of energy-related products covered by implementing measures. At the same time, instruments such as the EU Ecolabel or the EU green public procurement (GPP) are broader in scope but have reduced impact due to the limitations of voluntary approaches. In fact, there is no comprehensive set of requirements to ensure that all products placed on the EU market become increasingly sustainable.
3. The lack of reliable information on sustainability along value chains related to many products placed on the EU market de facto reducing the ability of economic operators upstream in the value chain to offer more sustainable products, and for consumers and procurers to choose products with the lowest environmental footprint.

Preliminary Assessment of Expected Impacts connected to EU measures

Likely economic impacts

EU measures would facilitate a more harmonised single market with incentives for more sustainable and innovative products across the whole EU. This provides strong economic potential for both EU and non-EU operators that offer sustainable products by reducing market fragmentation due to individual Member State initiatives.

Market incentives for sustainable products would increase the relative competitiveness of sustainable products vis-à-vis unsustainable products. Both EU and non-EU producers, retailers and other economic operators whose business model currently depends on unsustainable products will have to make changes or accept lower sales.

Measures to reduce negative effects on climate and the environment related to materials and production may at least in the short term lead to extra costs for producers and/or retailers, which could in turn lead to purchasing price increases for consumers, , but the corresponding costs borne by society related to those negative effects is reduced. Economies of scale mean the price difference in the longer term will be smaller as sustainable products become more mainstream and the extra costs are shared out over a larger number of products.

Better information along value chains is expected to facilitate enforcement by public authorities of new and existing product related legislation (e.g. REACH) and contribute to ensuring a level playing field for EU manufactured and imported products, thus increasing the competitiveness of EU industry.

Likely social impacts

• Improved recyclability and increased recycled content is expected to provide more jobs and added value in the recycling sector.
• Improved durability and reparability of products is expected to boost jobs in the reuse and repair sectors, in particular locally / inside the EU, strengthening local business structures.
• Better information along value chains on sustainability performance of products is expected to (further) boost demand for sustainable products, reuse, repair, remanufacturing and recycling, with associated benefits in growth and jobs.
• As explained above, in the short term some purchasing price increases for consumers could be expected. 

However, in the longer term, it is expected that increased product lifetimes reduce overall purchasing costs, and running costs (including utilities bills where appropriate) are reduced because more efficient products use less resources such as energy and water. 

Likely environmental impacts

The initiative aims to significantly reduce the environmental pressures (e.g. resource extraction, energy use, greenhouse gas and other emissions, environmental pollution, water use) and the associated environmental impacts (e.g. biodiversity loss, global warming, water scarcity, human and ecosystems toxicity) associated with current production and consumption patterns. As such, it will contribute greatly to the European Green Deal objectives. It will also contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), especially SDG 12 on responsible consumption and production. 

Likely impacts on fundamental rights

Depending on the options chosen, the initiative holds the potential to contribute to achieving a number of objectives contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, including fair and just working conditions, prohibition of child labour, environmental protection and consumer protection. 

Likely impacts on simplification and/or administrative burden

Minimum sustainability and information requirements on products are likely to have an administrative burden on economic operators involved in placing products on the EU market. However, taking these measures at EU level may lead to simplifications for manufacturers active on several national markets and preserve a level-playing field for all manufacturers. It may also clarify conflicting provisions existing in different pieces of EU legislation.  

Life cycle assessments (LCAs) offer insight into product and service environmental impact drivers by conducting rigorous and in-depth analysis that guides product design innovation and improves sustainability throughout the value chain. An LCA does not tell you what is best; it tells you what is.

Using the methodology, a company has a guidance from goal setting to the strategic application of results to guide product innovation using the tools of LCA, risk assessment and product footprinting. Using LCA as a practical and cost-effective business solution to evaluate cradle-to-grave impact. 

Product risk assessment

Assess a product or service’s risk exposure to water scarcity, resource use, deforestation and social impacts; benchmark products and services compared to competitors; assess the risks and benefits of product claims; and create a strategic plan to address risks.  

Screening

CA: Gain high-level insights on life cycle hotspots to drive innovation. 

ISO

Conformant LCA (per ISO 14040 and 14044) 

Water footprint

Quantify water impacts to identify impact drivers in the value chain (per ISO 14046).  

Carbon footprint

Calculate GHG emissions for a product or an entire organization, service or event (per ISO 14067). 

Environmental product declarations (EPDs)

Increase the transparency of a product’s environmental profile with an easy to understand document while gaining valuable LEED v4 points; create Product Category Rules for generating EPDs; and verify EPDs for listing with the International EPD? System. 

Whole building LCA

Assess the impacts of an entire building and gain valuable LEED v4 points.