Special Session on Product
Environmental Footprint
Mélanie Guiton and Enrico Benetto
Abstract The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Life Cycle Assessment
(LCA) method has been adopted by the European Commission in 2013 as part of
the Communication “Building the Single Market for Green Products” [1]. Since
then a pilot phase involving about 300 companies, industry associations, NGOs and
governments has been launched to develop product category rules for more than 20
different product groups. In this session it was discussed the status of play of the
work done till now and its future perspective.
1 Introduction
In 2010 a coalition of big companies from different sectors asked to the at the time
European Commissioner for Environment Janez Potočnik to intervene to solve a
problem that was undermining their competitiveness in the European market. The
problem was the proliferation of environmental labels and certification schemes that
was taking place in different European Member States. From the industry viewpoint
this situation constrained them in particular to produce different studies and calculations
reporting the environmental performance of the same product in case that product was
going to be sold in different countries. This situation was created by the fact that
different countries (e.g. France, Italy, United Kingdom, Switzerland) were developing
product-related environmental information policies based on similar-but-different
methodological approaches (being them ISO 14040-44, ISO 14025, WRI GHG protocol, PAS 2050, BP X30, and many more). The same year the European Council put
forward the same request to the Commission, that is to develop a harmonised method to
calculate the environmental performance of products along their entire supply chain.
Based on this double request the Commission developed the Product Environmental
M. Guiton (&) Á E. Benetto
Department ERIN—Environmental Research and Innovation,
Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST),
Life Cycle Sustainability and Risk Assessment, 4422 Belvaux, Luxembourg
e-mail: melanie.guiton@list.lu
© The Author(s) 2018
E. Benetto et al. (eds.), Designing Sustainable Technologies,
Products and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66981-6_57
515
Environmental Footprint
Mélanie Guiton and Enrico Benetto
Abstract The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Life Cycle Assessment
(LCA) method has been adopted by the European Commission in 2013 as part of
the Communication “Building the Single Market for Green Products” [1]. Since
then a pilot phase involving about 300 companies, industry associations, NGOs and
governments has been launched to develop product category rules for more than 20
different product groups. In this session it was discussed the status of play of the
work done till now and its future perspective.
1 Introduction
In 2010 a coalition of big companies from different sectors asked to the at the time
European Commissioner for Environment Janez Potočnik to intervene to solve a
problem that was undermining their competitiveness in the European market. The
problem was the proliferation of environmental labels and certification schemes that
was taking place in different European Member States. From the industry viewpoint
this situation constrained them in particular to produce different studies and calculations
reporting the environmental performance of the same product in case that product was
going to be sold in different countries. This situation was created by the fact that
different countries (e.g. France, Italy, United Kingdom, Switzerland) were developing
product-related environmental information policies based on similar-but-different
methodological approaches (being them ISO 14040-44, ISO 14025, WRI GHG protocol, PAS 2050, BP X30, and many more). The same year the European Council put
forward the same request to the Commission, that is to develop a harmonised method to
calculate the environmental performance of products along their entire supply chain.
Based on this double request the Commission developed the Product Environmental
M. Guiton (&) Á E. Benetto
Department ERIN—Environmental Research and Innovation,
Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST),
Life Cycle Sustainability and Risk Assessment, 4422 Belvaux, Luxembourg
e-mail: melanie.guiton@list.lu
© The Author(s) 2018
E. Benetto et al. (eds.), Designing Sustainable Technologies,
Products and Policies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66981-6_57
515