PE expands footprint in France by partnering with Gingko21

PE INTERNATIONAL is pleased to announce its recent partnership with Gingko 21, a French consulting company headed by Dr Ing Hélène Teulon, an experienced LCA and Eco-design expert.

After many successful projects completed together, such as the Car LCA project (comparison of ICE trains vs electrical vehicle) for ADEME, PE INTERNATIONAL partnered with Gingko 21 to respond to the opportunities created by sustainable business market trends and rising customer awareness of the environmental footprint of consumer products following Grenelle II.

The newly established partnership offers French customers an extensive software and services portfolio including PE’s GaBi software, a solution for product life cycle assessment and product footprints in accordance with Grenelle II, and SoFi software, a solution for corporate sustainability reporting according to the French reporting framework Bilan Carbone amongst others.

After more than 13 years working in the field of LCA and Eco-design, Hélène Teulon launched Gingko 21 in 2005 to support large companies such as Orange or Saint-Gobain in the deployment of eco-design policies. Gingko 21 has developed an eco-innovation tool box, OpenGreen® that allows companies to integrate the knowledge acquired through LCA studies into sustainable new product development.

Gingko 21 also maintains a free collaborative website, seeds4green.net, to foster the diffusion of LCA results through industry and society.

Update Product Environmental Footprint : French developments

Household consumption of goods and services represents a major challenge in reducing our impact on the environment, in terms of combating the greenhouse effect and moving towards a more energy and resource efficient economy. The development and display of an environmental footprint will result in the gradual availability to consumers of the information on the carbon footprint and other environmental impacts of their purchases. The dual purpose is to include an environmental component in consumer purchasing choices and to provide the entire production and distribution chain with new indicators to promote and intensify their efforts to better eco-design products.

As provided by the Grenelle II law, France is currently conducting a national experimentation on consumer product environmental information that has started on 1 July 2011 to last one year. The trial covers the quantification of environmental impacts and the communication of environmental footprints to the consumer. 230 companies applied 168 of them have been selected. All sectors are represented, with about one third from the food and beverage area. Several foreign companies – from Chile, Colombia, Sweden etc. – are part of the selection as well as French branches of multinationals.

In the meantime, since 2008, the ADEME-AFNOR stakeholder platform has been developing a general environmental footprinting methodology (BPX 30-323) and product category rules (PCRs) – twelve PCRs to date. ADEME is also constructing a public generic product life cycle database, as well as calculators. These tools aim to facilitate a general implementation.

The national experiment on consumer product environmental footprinting and communication continues until July this year. 

You can find additional information about the assessment of the national experiment on the right hand side.
http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/Product-Environmental-Footprint.html

Ground-breaking product eco-labelling trial

The French government has launched an eco-labelling program to guide consumers on the environmental impacts of their everyday purchases. With the passing of the Grenelle 2 law in 2010, France set the framework for this project.

A 12-month trial will start in July 2011 with 168 companies volunteering 1000 products. Companies will calculate simplified Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of their products that will serve as the basis for the eco-label. The diversity of products and companies will help identify possible challenges in data collection and other aspects of undertaking credible LCAs.

Several working groups in various sectors have been collaborating to define the methodologies of the eco-labelling framework including outlining the goal and scope of the simplified LCA for the different product categories. PE INTERNATIONAL is an active member in the setting up of this eco-labelling program and is supporting companies during the trial phase. GaBi software and databases enable premium quality results and extremely high flexibility in addressing this simplified LCA.

At the end of this trial, the government will submit an evaluation report to the French Parliament to inform future discussions on an extension of the regulation. The aim of the trial is therefore to provide sound information to strengthen the nationwide roll-out of the eco-labelling law.

For more information please contact Laura Guillon

About Grenelle 1 and 2
Following the passing of the law entitled Grenelle 1 (Law 2009_967 of August 3rd 2009), the French environmental institute (ADEME) and the institute in charge of releasing the standards in France (AFNOR) have led the project on environmental labelling of consumer goods. With the passing of Grenelle 2 in 2010, France will now set the framework for this environmental labelling project.