Tesco publishes over 1100 product carbon footprints

Tesco has set themselves demanding targets both to reduce carbon emissions of the products they sell by 30% by 2020, and to find ways to help customers reduce their carbon footprints by 50% by 2020. To help achieve this they have completed carbon footprint analysis of over 1,100 of their own-brand products.

Understanding the carbon footprints of these products helps Tesco to understand where greenhouse gas emissions arise, enabling them to reduce their impact on the environment. They have also used this information to carbon label over 500 products since 2008, and to provide helpful advice to their customers on how they can reduce their household carbon footprint. 

Find out more about carbon footprints of different products PDF 1MB

The theory and practice of LCA - Like ebony and ivory living in perfect harmony?

A newly published editorial in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment is seeking to promote cooperation in the development and application of life cycle assessment (LCA) across both academia and business.

Bringing together the collective experience and expertise of 22 contributing authors from universities, commercial enterprises, industry groups, and research organizations, the work addresses both the scientific underpinnings of the practice and the business process value.

The editorial, “LCA’s theory and practice: like ebony and ivory living in perfect harmony? , provides the context for framing the discussion on LCA applications in business practice and develops a cogent and comprehensive business case for the use of LCA.  The paper concludes with an invitation to both academia and business practitioners to work collaboratively and learn from each other in pursuit of improved LCA methodologies.

 >> Download the article and read more

Design more sustainable products

Watch our free webinar replay to gain valuable insight how to deliver more sustainable products, reduce costs and enhance your brand.

Investment in product sustainability performance delivers proven benefits across the organization – from business strategy to product development to your operations and supply chain including:

Brand Enhancement > Cost Reductions> Product Differentiation > Product Operating Efficiency>Risk management & compliance

Learn how to deliver the best possible sustainable designs with GaBi Envision

GaBi Envision is employed across the entire product development team to easily integrate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into your product design process, quickly evaluate ‘what-if’ scenarios and effectively communicate environmental impacts. 

>> Watch the webinar replay!

 

Get insights into sustainability

PE INTERNATIONAL is recognized by its clients as being a thought leader on how sustainability concepts can be applied to organizations and to products.

Committed to sharing our knowledge, we offer not only our services as consultants but also our insights through numerous whitepapers, case studies, presentations, studies and webinars.

Check out the new resource section of our website!

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 2013


To 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.

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.”

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.

Get your free software demo of the leading life cycle assessment tool for product sustainability!

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.

Download the full EPD here

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

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

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!”

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

Open publication - Free publishing - More building

Find more studies, whitepapers and presentations in our resource section on www.pe-international.com

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

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

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

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.

Read the full case study