Trans-Tasman collaboration on development of an EPD scheme

Life Cycle Association New Zealand (LCANZ) and Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society (ALCAS) are currently working on the development of an Australasian EPD scheme based on the well-established German IBU EPD system.

Global markets increasingly demand science-based, verified and comparable information about the environmental performance of products and services. Environmental Product Declarations, or EPDs, provide a standardized report on the environmental impacts linked to a product or service over its entire life cycle. However, there is currently no standardized internationally-recognised EPD programme in place.

LCANZ and its Australian counterpart, ALCAS, are currently looking to fill this gap for Australasia. The two not-for-profit associations are partnering to investigate the development of an Australasian scheme similar to the well-established European scheme run by the Institute for Construction and Environment (IBU).

Barbara Nebel, President of LCANZ, is excited to work together with ALCAS to establish a cross-Tasman EPD scheme: “It makes most sense for New Zealand and Australia to have one scheme across the Tasman, making it a lot more efficient for companies to develop their EPDs.”

The impetus to examine IBU’s EPD scheme was that 25 European organizations recently signed a MoU to establish a Pan-EU EPD platform. “The European ECO-EPD platform with 17 countries and numerous GBC is the leading one in the world”, says Barbara Nebel, President of LCANZ.

David Baggs, ALCAS President, underlines the goal, “This initiative that the Board of ALCAS and LCANZ are undertaking, it will ensure that all EPDs performed in Australia and New Zealand will be compatible with those in the EU will facilitate the export of Australasian manufactured goods into the EU - the largest single marketplace in the world with a GDP of nearly USD$18 trillion.”

The German EPD scheme, administered by IBU, is a leading force in the ECO-EPD platform and has offered their support to developing an Australasian scheme.

New Enterprise Sustainability Performance Software

PE INTERNATIONAL launches SoFi 5 delivering substantial advances in Enterprise Sustainability Performance (ESP), and takes to market pioneering new standards for corporate environmental footprinting and enterprise-wide sustainability improvement

Sustainable business software provider PE INTERNATIONAL makes with the launch of SoFi 5, the lives of executives tasked with sustainability management much easier. With its new and advanced intuitive functionality, SoFi 5 helps improves sustainability in every element of an enterprise’s operations and supply chain; be they energy consumption, water use, carbon emissions or any other kind of social, environmental and economic impacts.

This latest version of SoFi software is capable of intuitively determining a company’s potential performance gaps and responding appropriately with peer-tested improvement recommendations, fully appraised for cost estimates and expected results.

Manage environmental, social and economic impacts

In a nutshell, SoFi 5 ESP software helps enterprises understand and manage their total environmental, social and economic impacts in five key phases:

1) It builds an information landscape by aggregating all the sustainability data in an organization.

2) It measures current sustainability performance against extensive sector-specific benchmark datasets.

3) It finds performance gaps and identifies, evaluates and cost-benefit-analyses real-world improvement opportunities.

4) It helps build and execute ongoing improvement plans.

5) It helps communicates the results. Armed with this valuable output any sustainability-tasked executive can then communicate the enterprise’s success to customers, contractors, suppliers and stakeholders.

Sector leaders worldwide benifit from this technology

Major companies already benefitting from this technology include Siemens which helped its tier 1 suppliers to reduce energy cost by up to 17%; DekaBank which saved 300,000 Euros in energy and paper costs during the first 6 months alone; Deutsche Post DHL which increased carbon efficiency for its own operations and its subcontractors by 12% over 3 years; as well as similar success stories from Kraft Foods, Adidas and Munich Re amongst many other sector leaders worldwide.

Discover Enterprise Sustainability Performance for your business – watch the Video

Don’t miss this Wednesday’s Webinar – Product Sustainability in Industrial Manufacturing

Join our exclusive, free webinar to gain valuable insight into the latest trends surrounding product life cycle thinking in the industrial manufacturing sector and learn from real-life leadership examples for radically increasing the business value of sustainability programs:

• Develop innovative products and generate more revenue

• Realize cost savings while becoming greener

• Improve the quality of your products and processes

All attendees will receive an exclusive copy of the brand new case study of Interface and how they derived value from sustainable manufacturing.

Date

4pm CET / 10 EST April 4, 2012

Hear from the Experts

Sebastian Gann, Environmental Program Manager at Zumtobel, will provide a case study review of their system for automatically generating customer- facing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and show a concrete example of how they capture clear business value from their sustainability initiatives.

Pete Girard, product sustainability expert at PE INTERNATIONAL, will provide a brief overview of sustainability trends in the industrial manufacturing sector, reviewing current leadership initiatives and the outlook for what leadership positioning is likely to will look like in 5 years’ time.  

Find out how industry leaders are…

…Driving top-line revenue growth by becoming the preferred supplier to corporate customers

…Reducing costs by understanding environmental impacts and eliminating waste

…Managing risk by identifying environmental “hotspots” and mitigating the impact of sub-optimal materials or processes

…Enhancing brand value through improved transparency and communicating with customers about progress in environmental performance

…Creating innovative products that offer both better utility and lower environmental impact

Register Today and recieve our latest case study

Environmental Product Declarations in Austria hold potential for communication as standardized environmental information label

In Austria, demand for responsible production and use of building and construction materials among conscious suppliers, producers and end users has made Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) gain popularity as means of independent, holistic, verified environmental performance measurements of a product or service for open marketing claims.

As it has been reaffirmed at the EPD workshop in Vienna, major stakeholders and players encouraged by different factors such as; value chain, market constrains and growing demands by consumers, own processes in house knowledge, scarcity and supply risk of resources, profitability etc; believe EPDs in Austria are gaining favor, and will help differentiate environmental performance of products, but without leading the ranking between good or bad.

 

EPD workshop documentation

Some important examples by Austrian industry representatives were shown at the event that was taking place at Oct. 11, 2011 and can be read and download here.

Consommation durable : expérimentation nationale de l’affichage des caractéristiques environnementales des produits

New information on the currently ongoing French National Experiment for environmental labelling has been published, including practical approaches for communication.

More information: www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr

New whitepaper about the environmental performance of chemical products

The environmental benefits of chemical products are often unknown to the public. PE newest Whitepaper describes the pathways for quantifying and improving of the environmental performance and shows how to choose the right option.

Read more about it in PE’s new whitepaper.

Brochure Sustainable Building 2010 released - Becoming a supplier to Masdar City

Are you interested in supplying products in the construction and operation of Masdar City? In order for Masdar City to reach its ambitious goals of being one of the world’s most sustainable urban developments, Masdar City encourages suppliers to find out the carbon footprint for the products they sell and join in on taking actions towards improving sustainability throughout their production processes and supply chain.

As LCA consultants to MASDAR City, we at PE INTERNATIONAL are looking forward to helping you better position your products with Masdar City as well as in the global sustainability market. Please download our 2010 Sustainable Building brochure wherein you will find information on several developments in the construction arena that should convince you that a sustainability is the only way forward for businesses who want to be competitive in today’s marketplace. 

Tremendous challenges for the global business community

“We have to make significant changes in the way we design, manufacture, distribute and influence the use and disposal of our products/services.” says Nuno DaSilva, Managing Director of PE Americas.

Pressures on the world's environment require every company to realize their entire direct and indirect environmental impact and to become more sustainable. A company's impact on the environment however doesn't stop once their product or service is delivered to the customer or distribution channel. The environmental impact of how a product is used and ultimately disposed of is typically controlled or heavily influenced by the product's design, recommended use and disposal methods.

Companies therefore need to integrate an enterprise wide emissions based approach with an assessment of product/services to fully understand their complete environmental footprint. By identifying all direct and indirect environmental impacts your organization will be able to target 'hot spots' or key areas to implement sustainable initiatives / environmental management.

In an article for “business management” DaSilva reveals the best methodologies for measuring an organization’s environmental impact

read the full article

Product Carbon Footprint Guide

With complex supply chains, extensive outsourcing, and frequent product revisions, the electronics industry has long believed that collecting supply chain emission information is prohibitively expensive. But as industry leaders are proving, creating a carbon footprint for any electronic device can be not just fast and cost-effective, but essential to a competing in tomorrow’s market.

Instead of near-sighted focus on regulation, product carbon footprinting helps create a sustainability strategy which can anticipate, rather than respond to, regulatory pressure. Leading companies like Siemens, AMD and Apple have adopted Life Cycle Assessment as the way to fully calculate and disclose the environmental impacts of their products.

PE INTERNATIONAL has 20 years of experience deploying software and services packages to support companies assess and manage product carbon footprints. With our SoFi Software for Scope 1 and 2 carbon footprint assessments, GaBi  Software and the electronics database for Scope 3 assessment, and an international team of experts on the environmental impacts of electronics, PE INTERNATIONAL provides a one-stop shop for managing sustainability programs in the electronic sector.

Learn how industry leaders are working with PE INTERNATIONAL to understand their supply chain carbon impacts!

Download Product Carbon Footprint Guide for electronic products

Practitioner-Workshop: Using GaBi 4 software and databases for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and carbon foot-printing

Nowadays environmental aspects have high importance for strategic, short and mid-term business decisions on a daily basis in all industries. A variety of industries are faced with global discussion on Global Warming Potential, carbon footprinting and upcoming questions about the sustainability of processes and products. The environmental effects of transport systems are also high on the agenda. Your industry too?

Then sign up here for our workshop!

Tesco creates tool to gauge the greenness of its stores - Tesco gestaltet ein Tool um die Umweltverträglichkeit seiner Filialen zu messen

Tesco has developed a piece of software to evaluate how environmentally friendly the equipment it uses in stores is. Called the Environmental Design Tool, it has been created by Tesco's environmental design team in collaboration with consulting group PE INTERNATIONAL. The environmental modelling software provides an unbiased assessment of different materials and products.

read more

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Tesco erarbeitete eine Softwareanwendung um die Umweltfreundlichkeit seiner Filialen zu messen. Das sogenannte „Environmental Design Tool“ wurde von Tescos Umweltdesign-Team in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Beratungsunternehmen PE INTERNATIONAL entwickelt. Die Softwareanwendung erlaubt eine unverzerrte Bewertung verschiedener Materialien und Produkten.

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GaBi i-report – Greening the supply chain

GaBi i-report - an extension to the world-renowned GaBi 4 software – will assist you and your suppliers in proactively reducing the carbon footprints associated with your organization’s products, processes and supply chain.

With GaBi i-report, you can evaluate the environmental impacts of alternative products before they go into production. Grant the design experts, within or outside of your company, with the environmental background to select the best alternative now and better design in the future.