Sustainable Product Policies and LCA: experience gained from the development of environmental labelling criteria

Type I environmental labels are voluntary programs aiming at identifying environmental superior product options on the basis of pass-fail criteria founded on cycle considerations. The criteria development process typically involves the analysis of complex product systems. This contribution describes experience gained during the development of EU Ecolabel criteria and the role played by Life Cycle Asssessment (LCA) in this process. A practical Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) approach based on LCA and complemented by other product-related information has been applied in this context. LCA plays a core role in the criteria development process for assessing environmental impacts of typical products on the market, identifying life cycle hotspots and evaluating improvement options. Review of the material produced in the literature and development of ad-hoc studies to integrate such information can be functional for the definition of key environmental areas on which to set criteria and for addresssing further investigation efforts to find best practices of production and consumption. A complementary product-oriented analysis is necessary to gather legislative, technoeconomic and environmental elements that could be not entirely integrated in LCA (e.g. legislative constraints, market and quality of products, inherent safety, indoor air quality, noise emissions) and to identify options which could be used to formulate relevant criteria. In this process, interaction with stakeholders is essential for gathering information and views from experts, pointing out key challenges and solving critical aspects related to the definition of feasible and fair criteria. The outlined approach has been applied to a series of product groups. As illustration, main findings related to the development of labelling criteria for Absorbent Hygiene Products (AHP), which includes products as baby diapers, feminine care pads, tampons and nurse pads, have been reported. The criteria development process involves the analysis of complex systems where LCA plays a core role, although the definition of a coherent set of criteria needs also multi-disciplinary analyses and continuous discussion with experts. LCA can be a powerful instrument for informing policy makers but there are inherent limitations which require critical analysis and certain flexibility for finding a balance between what could be good to do in theory and what can be done in practice.

CORDELLA Mauro;  WOLF Oliver; 

2015-05-20

SETAC

JRC92951

2309 - 8031,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC92951,