Sep 27, 2012
Get insights into sustainability
Labels:
case study,
presentation,
study,
sustinability,
webinar,
white paper
Sep 11, 2012
New Product Carbon Footprint standard: ISO 14067
The new standard ISO 14067 for carbon footprints of products will provide much more specific guidance than the underlying ISO 14044:2006, Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines.
ISO 14067 calls for specific product category rules, including not only the specifications of ISO 14025:2006, Environmental labels and declarations – Type III environmental declarations – Principles and procedures, but also other sector-specific standards or internationally agreed guidance documents related to materials and product categories.
ISO 14067 expected for July 2013
The new standard builds largely on the existing ISO standards for life cycle assessments (ISO 14040/44) and environmental labels and declarations (ISO 14025) and is planned to become available as a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) by February 2013, with publication expected for July 2013To improve user-friendliness and consistency, working group WG 2, GHG management in the value or supply chain, of ISO technical committee ISO/TC 207, Environment management, subcommittee SC 7, Greenhouse gas management and related activities, decided to merge Part 1, Quantification, and Part 2, Communication. The working group allowed for a second round of balloting to ensure that the standard would earn broad support in all countries.
Addressing direct and indirect land-use changes
WG 2 decided to align the requirements for addressing direct and indirect land-use changes with the specifications of the revised PAS 2050. These requirements are informed by research in Europe and the American state of California, which elaborate details related to sustainability criteria for biofuels.
Labels:
carbon footprint,
iso 14025,
ISO 14040/44,
ISO 14044:200,
iso 14067,
product
Jul 18, 2012
Buckman accelerates sustainability performance management with SoFi
Buckman, a privately held, global specialty chemical company, has selected SoFi, the Enterprise Sustainability Performance solution by PE INTERNATIONAL, to deliver improved sustainability data management, provide access to performance analysis tools, forecasting, benchmarking and content, and streamline their GRI reporting process.
Buckman, who works with worldwide customers in pulp and paper, leather and water treatment, has made a significant and long-term commitment to sustainable development. After reviewing and assessing potential solutions that would meet the company’s numerous sustainability requirements, Buckman selected SoFi for its intuitive data management capabilities, sustainability benchmarks and best practice databases, and GRI-verified reporting.SoFi is PE INTERNATIONAL’s powerful software platform for companies to obtain financial-grade sustainability information and manage sustainability performance for their own operations, their supply chain and their products. Buckman is using SoFi to track sustainability key performance indicators and produce its annual sustainability report according to Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, streamlining the cumbersome and often time-consuming data collection process.
In commenting on the selection of SoFi for their sustainability needs, Barry Enix, Corporate Safety Director at Buckman said, “PE INTERNATIONAL brings combined sustainability services and software expertise to the table which offered a rapid and effective deployment of the SoFi Enterprise Sustainability Performance solution. The result for Buckman is that we now have a web based platform that centralizes our data collection, automates calculations of our carbon and energy footprint, delivers point-and-click sustainability reporting, reduces data errors, and incorporates embedded templates for GRI reporting. All of this translates into greater operational efficiency and reduced risk for the organization.”
Labels:
Buckman,
chemicals,
customer,
data,
enterprise,
Global Reporting Initiative,
GRI,
management,
pe international,
SoFi,
software,
sustainability
Jul 11, 2012
Sustainable Products with Life Cycle Assessment
You want to deliver more sustainable products to match your customers expectations and become more resource efficient in a world of price rises and legislative obligations? Check out our free LCA software demo and contact us!
GaBi - the market leading Life Cycle Assessment software makes it easy for your business to carry out Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). GaBi 5 even helps your business to cut costs and make your production and supply chains more efficient.
So what does GaBi 5 do?
GaBi 5 models every element of a product or system from a life cycle perspective, equipping businesses to make the best informed decisions on the manufacture and lifecycle of any manufactured product, everything from a hand-held mobile phone to a match-stick to an airport.
It also provides an easily accessible content database detailing the energy and environmental impact of sourcing and refining every raw or processed element of a manufactured item.In addition, it looks at the impact on the environment and presents alternative options for manufacturing, distribution, recyclability, pollution and sustainability.
Labels:
gabi,
lca,
life cycle assessment,
Ökobilanz,
software
Jul 6, 2012
New Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) on Decorative High-Pressure Laminates
ICDLI - the International Committee of the Decorative Laminates Industry – has just published its EPD on Decorative High-Pressure Laminates.
The Environmental Product Declaration for
decorative laminates is an important information for architects as well
as construction engineers planning to use decorative laminates according
to EN 438 part 3 and part 4 with a density of at least 1350m² for
construction.
10 companies worked together
with PE INTERNATIONAL to generate average environmental indicators
according to the new standard on EPDs EN 15804. The German program
holder IBU verified the EPD.
Labels:
EN 15804,
en 439,
environmental product declaration,
epd,
laminates,
pe international,
ucdli
Jun 6, 2012
Nokia publishes sustainability report 2011
Our customer Nokia published its sustainability report for 2011. Nokia uses life cycle assessment to calculate the
environmental impact of their products and processes. LCAs help them
identify and focus on the areas where they can make the biggest
reductions.
You can find the full sustainability report here
You can find the full sustainability report here
Labels:
lca,
life cycle assessment,
nokia,
pe international,
report,
sustainability
Jun 5, 2012
New Video – Unlock the Value of Product Sustainability in Manufacturing
Missed our latest webinar? Watch the video 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
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
Watch the video
Jun 4, 2012
A new era of sustainability performance management
SoFi 5, the new Enterprise Sustainability Performance solution by PE INTERNATIONAL, received a warm welcome by customers and market experts alike.
With the highly anticipated introduction of the software in April 2012, PE enters into a new era of sustainability performance management solutions that leverage sustainability content to help organizations transform sustainability data into insights and implement the most profitable sustainability initiatives. SoFi 5 features 15,000 industry benchmarks; 130,000 impact profiles (emission factors and risk profiles) as well as 130,000 due diligence projects including implementation cost and Return On Investment.Newest release one year ahead of competition
In previews and launch briefings, industry analysts praised the intuitive gap analysis and powerful benchmarking against industry averages and complemented the effortless drill-down into sustainability performance indicators. Especially, the intelligent diagnostics engine that intuitively produces recommendations based on a company’s industry sector and site location was perceived as “at least one year ahead of competitive offerings” by a market insider familiar with other sustainable business solutions.Customers are raving about new enterprise solution
In an exclusive webinar series corporate managers experienced live how they can achieve improved Enterprise Sustainability Performance with SoFi 5. Afterwards, participating SoFi clients such as Dole, Adidas and EAC as well as sustainability professionals from other organizations raved about the new software solution. As one client, who currently manages sustainability performance indicators for over 200 sites in SoFi, put it: “The new SoFi 5 software has blown us away. Last year, we chose SoFi 4.3 because it was the only environmental performance management solution that met our expectations. But SoFi 5 has now raised the bar again, going beyond our expectations.”Join our free SoFi 5 live demonstration
If you missed the SoFi 5 launch webinars and would like to catch up on Enterprise Sustainability Performance, register now for our next webinar “Experience Enterprise Sustainability Performance in new SoFi 5 - live!”
Labels:
adidas,
dole,
enterprise,
pe international,
performance,
SoFi,
software,
solution management,
sustainability
Jun 2, 2012
New Zealand LCA conference – Review
The 2nd New Zealand Life Cycle Assessment Conference “LCA: A Business Compass for Sustainability,” was held in Auckland on 28-29 March 2012. The conference focused on the application of LCA and Life Cycle Management in business to express the increasingly important role of LCA in guiding and shaping business operations, management practices and strategies.
The conference attracted close to 100 participants from NZ, Australia and five other countries across Europe, Asia and Africa. The final program can be viewed here: www.lcaconference.org.nz “The number and high quality of papers submitted was overwhelming,” commented Barbara Nebel, Chair of the Scientific Committee.Industry and user needs with regard to LCA were a key focus in all presentations. Keynote speakers included Prof. Matthias Finkbeiner (Technical University Berlin), Clare Broadbent (worldsteel), Dave Maslen (NZ Merino) and Dr. Alastair Woodard (Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society).
The conference was organised jointly by the Life Cycle Association New Zealand (LCANZ) and the New Zealand Centre for Life Cycle Management.
Labels:
business,
conference,
lca,
lcanz,
life cycle assessment,
new zealand,
pe international
Jun 1, 2012
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.
May 31, 2012
Turkey – Vitra published its first EPD according EU-standards
Turkish building material manufacturers are increasingly developing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). After Turk Ytong in 2011, several leading producers are now following suit in order to demonstrate their commitment to responsible production and products.
In April 2012 the leading Turkish ceramic producer Eczacıbaşı – VitrA published its first EPD according the new European norm EN 15804 for sanitary ceramic products. In this product category Eczacıbaşı – VitrA is the first company in Europe to provide such a declaration and underlines Eczacıbaşı’s commitment to sustainability and environmental efficiency.All EPD’s published by Turkish companies until now have been developed under the label of the German Institute für Bauen und Umwelt (IBU).
May 16, 2012
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
Labels:
enterprise,
environmental,
esp,
management,
pe international,
performance,
SoFi,
software,
sustainability
May 7, 2012
Free Whitepaper - Transparency and the Role of Environmental Product Declarations
As the world’s consumption of natural resources continues to grow at an ever increasing rate, the design and manufacture of environmentally responsible products is no longer a luxury but a necessity. From electronics to textiles to food production, producers are giving increased attention to the environmental impact of their products across the entire product life cycle. These considerations span design and manufacturing through actual use to end-of-life. Such efforts from producers are now leading towards the collection and compilation of relevant environmental data. This data helps identify opportunities for improvement along the supply chain, often taking the form of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, there are many ways to
distribute this data.
Everyone benefits when a product’s claim of environmental sustainability is easily validated against objective and transparent criteria, thereby simplifying the process of making informed direct comparisons among similar products. An environmental product declaration (EPD) is a validation tool that offers manufacturers a standard approach for assessing the environmental impact of their products and provides buyers with an effective framework for making direct product comparisons. As such, an EPD addresses the needs of both manufacturers and buyers seeking clear, credible and precise information.
This UL white paper discusses the use and importance of EPDs in the validation and certification of life cycle-based product environmental impacts. The paper then reviews the steps in creating EPDs consistent with the requirements of ISO 14025 2006, Environmental labels and declarations—Type III environmental declarations— Principles and procedures, and discusses the important role of an EPD program operator in developing and running an effective EPD program. The report concludes with a look at potential developments regarding the use of EPDs in support of product environmental claims.
distribute this data.
Everyone benefits when a product’s claim of environmental sustainability is easily validated against objective and transparent criteria, thereby simplifying the process of making informed direct comparisons among similar products. An environmental product declaration (EPD) is a validation tool that offers manufacturers a standard approach for assessing the environmental impact of their products and provides buyers with an effective framework for making direct product comparisons. As such, an EPD addresses the needs of both manufacturers and buyers seeking clear, credible and precise information.
This UL white paper discusses the use and importance of EPDs in the validation and certification of life cycle-based product environmental impacts. The paper then reviews the steps in creating EPDs consistent with the requirements of ISO 14025 2006, Environmental labels and declarations—Type III environmental declarations— Principles and procedures, and discusses the important role of an EPD program operator in developing and running an effective EPD program. The report concludes with a look at potential developments regarding the use of EPDs in support of product environmental claims.
Apr 23, 2012
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.
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
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
Labels:
ademe,
environment,
france,
frenc,
grenelle,
labelling,
lca database,
life cycle assessment,
PCR,
product
Apr 4, 2012
New Enterprise Sustainability Performance Software
PE INTERNATIONAL launches SoFi 5 software for ever-improving Enterprise Sustainability Performance (ESP) across company operations and supply chains.
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
Labels:
enterprise,
esp,
pe international,
performance,
SoFi,
software,
sustainability
Apr 3, 2012
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, 2012Hear 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
Labels:
case study,
declaration,
environmental,
interface,
pe international,
product,
sustainability,
webinar,
zumtobel
Mar 27, 2012
Life Cycle Assessment moves Green IT into the future
A successful Life Cycle Assessment pilot study moves Wincor Nixdorf’s Green IT program forward.
The study builds the foundation for the pioneering concept of the green ATM, with lower energy consumption and reduced emissions, and contributes to the company’s eco-design guideline optimization. Wincor Nixdorf can now declare a valid environmental impact of their products.
The study builds the foundation for the pioneering concept of the green ATM, with lower energy consumption and reduced emissions, and contributes to the company’s eco-design guideline optimization. Wincor Nixdorf can now declare a valid environmental impact of their products.
Read the full case study
Labels:
ecodesign,
environment,
green it,
impact,
lca,
life cycle assessment,
nixdorf,
pe international,
wincor
Mar 15, 2012
Green building guide released: Understanding the embodied impacts of construction products
The purpose of this new guide, written by Jane Anderson from PE INTERNATIONAL & Jane Thornback from the UK's Construction Products Association, is to improve understanding across the construction industry of the embodied impacts of construction products.
The quest for a more sustainable and more recently a low carbon built environment, has meant that the demand for information on the impact of construction products has increased dramatically.Much attention is being given to new ways of designing and constructing buildings and whilst the focus has been on energy efficiency and capturing renewable energy, there is a growing awareness that the embodied impacts of construction products and especially embodied carbon will become increasingly important.
What the Guide explains
Within the construction product sector, the measurement of environmental impact is not a new activity. The guide explains how the environmental impacts of construction products are measured; what processes and schemes are already established; what information is generated; how this is used and assessed at the building level and what effect European Regulations and emerging European Standards will have.
Construction products
Construction products are made of a variety of materials, which are manufactured into a myriad of products that combined together create buildings or infrastructure that make up the very fabric of our society. A construction product is a component of a building and not the building itself.
The impact of a construction product must therefore always be considered in the context of the role it performs in a building. For example, insulation makes a building more energy efficient and that function may outweigh many times the environmental impact of its manufacture and disposal.
Life Cycle Assessment
All products, not just construction products, have an impact on the environment and this impact can occur at any time during the manufacture, usage or at end of life. All these stages are collectively called a life-cycle.
Construction products have impacts from extraction of raw materials, processing and manufacture, maintenance and refurbishment, to eventual end of life and disposal. The measurement of this impact is called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). There are two types of LCA for construction products: generic assessments that collate data from several manufacturers of the same type of product to create an industry average; and proprietary assessments that use information from a specific manufacturer and the LCA is specific to their product. This guide outlines the procedures that must be undertaken to implement a life cycle assessment in accordance with international standards.
Environmental impacts
LCA measures environmental impact across a range of issues such as impact: on air quality; on water usage and water quality; on toxicity to human life and to ecosystem functioning; on impact on global warming; as well as resource use. In the 1970s the main concern in Europe was acid rain, today it is climate change. The importance of these issues can change over time as society’s concerns and priorities change. The guide provides a detailed description of the commonly assessed environmental indicators.
Environmental Product Declarations (EPD)
The construction industry has adopted a particular approach to communicating LCA data known as an Environmental Product Declaration or EPD. This has been developed to provide environmental information from LCA studies in a common format, based on common rules known as Product Category Rules (PCR). EPD have been used for construction products since the first environmental assessments schemes were developed in the 1990s and an ISO standard for EPD sets out the standards they should meet.
EPD can only be compared when the rules of the PCR used are the same and all the relevant life cycle stages have been included. Additionally, products cannot be compared unless their functionality and use are considered at the building level within a system. The guide provides examples of what EPD look like.
EPD Schemes across Europe
Many European countries have developed national LCA schemes producing EPD, these include France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries and the UK. The best known scheme in the UK is that developed by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) which since the mid-1990s has gathered information from UK manufacturing industry and amassed it into an environmental profiles database.
This database is a major component of the BRE’s Green Guide to Building Specification which is used in the government’s Code for Sustainable Homes and in the BRE’s environmental rating system for buildings called BREEAM.
The European Single Market and construction products
With the advent of the European single market for construction products, the European Commission became concerned that national EPD schemes and building level assessment schemes would represent a barrier to trade across Europe. The EU therefore sought a mandate from the EU Member States to develop European standards for the assessment of the sustainability performance of construction works and of construction products. This mandate is called CEN/TC 350.
From 2010 European standards began to emerge from this process and Standard BS EN15804 was published in February 2012 providing core rules for construction product EPD.
European Regulations and Standards
The Construction Products Directive of 1989 was one of the first Directives from the EU Commission to create a common framework for the regulations on buildings and construction products. It has been replaced by the Construction Products Regulation and is legally binding throughout the EU.
The CPR includes requirements for the sustainable use of natural resources, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions over the life cycle and the use of EPD for assessing and reporting the impacts of construction products. If an EU Member State wishes to regulate in these areas of sustainability it must use European standards where they exist when regulating and must withdraw national standards. This means that in the case of the CPR a Member State must use the CEN/TC 350 suite of standards.
Assessing the impact of materials and products at the building level
An EPD provides robust and consistent information that can be used in building level assessments and the guide elaborates on the variety of ways that this can be done. In addition a number of building level tools are emerging aimed at improving decisions at the design stage by combining embodied environmental impact data and whole life cost data (i.e. economic) and link them to BIM (Building Information Modelling) data.
The future
Across Europe, the various environmental rating schemes are seeking to harmonise the ways in which they assess products and buildings.
Increasingly models are emerging to link embodied impacts with operational data thus enabling a better understanding of the trade-off between operational and embodied impacts and in time benchmarks for different types of buildings will emerge. All of which contributes greatly to the goal of a low carbon, more resource efficient, sustainable built environment.
Download the new guide from the resource section of our website
Mar 8, 2012
Italian industry turns to sustainable development in response to economic crisis
Captains of Industry seek to capitalize on opportunity to boost brands and profits through a strategy of sustainable development.
For over a decade now Italian economic growth has stumbled and to a large extent even more so than other European countries. In light of these challenges Italian businesses are increasingly recognizing the opportunities offered by adopting and deploying the right sustainability strategy to help boost growth and customer preference for their products and services.In response to this growing demand, PE INTERNATIONAL, a global provider of sustainability performance solutions and its Italian strategic partner for the last 10 years, FEBE-ECOLOGIC have galvanized their resources and expertise to form PE INTERNATIONAL Italy S.r.l. which was established at the end of last year and is already attracting new customers.
The newly established operation will offer a blend of software for corporate and product sustainability software as well as consulting services aimed at large and mid-market enterprises across all industries.
“There is a strong demand for integrated consulting services and technology solutions that allow clients to identify cost savings and take advantage of new revenue and growth opportunities,” said Emanuela Scimia, Managing Director at PE INTERNATIONAL Italy S.r.l.. As one organization we have the experts, enterprise sustainability solutions and capabilities to enable valuable business transformations for our customers.”
PE’s solution portfolio includes GaBi software solutions for product sustainability (life cycle assessment and product footprints) and SoFi software solutions for managing corporate sustainability.
Labels:
developement,
ECOLOGIC,
Emanula Scimia,
FEBE,
gabi,
Italy,
pe international,
SoFi,
softwasre,
sustainability
Feb 29, 2012
Brand new GaBi 5 Demo version!
The new GaBi 5 Demo version is a 30-day limited full version of the GaBi 5 software, enabling you to learn about all the features and functions of GaBi 5 with a guided example for the LCA of a paper clip.
The GaBi 5 Demo version comes with a small database for a guided example.Try out the world's leading LCA software yourself and download the brand new GaBi 5 Demo version!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)