Revision of the European Ecolabel Criteria for: Laundry detergents and Industrial and institutional laundry detergents Preliminary report

Abstract

The EU Ecolabel criteria for laundry detergents and industrial and institutional laundry detergents are under revision. This revision process will take into account the current market conditions and the EU Ecolabel criteria will aim at addressing the most important environmental impacts of the laundry detergents (consumer and industrial and institutional detergents) in a life cycle perspective. The identification of the main hotspots is carried out in this study by means of an initial extensive literature review and subsequent LCA studies. LCA studies shown that the energy used for heating the washing water during the use stage, has an impact in all the environmental categories under study but especially on fossil fuel depletion and global warming potential. The extraction and processing of raw materials that cause impacts on the categories such as mineral depletion, land use and energy use as well as the emissions to the environment (discharge of wastewater) has also impacts of importance depending on the scenario under consideration. The study reveals that there are several improvement opportunities such as detergent compaction which can bring savings in resources or reduction in the wash temperature. Changes in the detergent formulation can also reduce the impacts in different categories.