European Guidelines for measuring the Environmental Footprint of Products and Organisations

In close co-operation, DG Environment and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission are developing two harmonised European methodologies for measuring the Environmental Footprint of products (covering goods and services) and organisations. The objective is to support decision-making processes in business and policy with a comprehensive multi-criteria set of indicators based on the robust and quality assured measurement of environmental performance. This is to overcome some identified shortcomings of single indicator measurements and other existing methods. The overarching purpose is to reduce the environmental impacts of products and organisations in a more resource efficient and sustainable Europe and address the right of European citizens to receive reliable environmental information. The presented work is based on drafts before stakeholder consultations and subject to change. It relates to one of the building blocks of the Flagship initiative of the Europe 2020 Strategy – “A Resource-Efficient Europe.” The European Commission's “Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe” proposes ways to increase resource productivity and to decouple economic growth from both resource use and environmental impacts, taking a life-cycle perspective. It states specifically as one of the objectives to: “Establish a common methodological approach to enable Member States and the private sector to assess, display and benchmark the environmental performance of products, services and companies based on a comprehensive assessment of environmental impacts over the life-cycle ('environmental footprint')”.

PANT Rana;  CHOMKHAMSRI Kirana;  PELLETIER Nathaniel;  MANFREDI Simone;  GALATOLA Michele;  BEDO Imola; 

2013-03-22

SETAC

JRC67834

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC67834,