Requirements on Consumer Information about Product ... - ANEC

Consumer Information about PCF
• The labels base on a multi-criteria approach, in which the criteria are decided upon by
an independent group of interested stakeholders.
• Products are certified by a third party.
• Labels enjoy a high credibility by their target groups, which are consumers and public
procurement.
At the moment, information on PCF or CO2e emissions on the bases of an LCA or PCF are
used to check the overall impacts of a product over its life cycle. Then, criteria are developed
for the identified hotspots. Those criteria usually do not refer to CO2e emissions directly but
rather indirectly, setting limits for e.g. electricity demand or excluding certain product
solutions at all because of their high PCF value.
There is one prominent example for a type I label that strongly focuses on climate relevant
emission: the German Blue Angel was re-launched in 2008 in four different thematic clusters,
one of them being the cluster “Blue Angel, protects the climate” (“Blauer Engel, schützt das
Klima”). Products belonging to this cluster are of high relevance concerning their climate
impact, e.g. energy consuming products like household appliances or energy related
products like solar-powered appliances. Figures on the PCF are not displayed or directly
used as limit values for criteria. But even for this specific “Blue Angel, protects the climate”, a
multicriterial approach is applied which means that all relevant environmental impacts are
considered, not only greenhouse gases.
It may generally be concluded that for type I labels
• in-depth PCF studies serve very well as starting point for the identification of hotspots
and the development of criteria. The PCF value over the whole life cycle is not suitable
as limit, CO2 emission values for single life cycle phases may be suitable for individual
product groups (see e.g. EU ecolabel for paper with its CO2e limit for production);
• instead of CO2e limits, the results of the in-depth PCF study will rather serve to identify
suitable production and use phase indicators like hazardous substances in production
and electricity demand in the use phase. Moreover, hazardous substances in the
product (e.g. flame retardants in plastic parts) and quality issues may be added;
• the multicriterial approach has proven successful and will also be followed in the future.
As other relevant environmental impacts could be missed, it would be counterproductive
and expedient to focus on CO2e emissions alone.
Type II Self Declarations (ISO 14021)
• Are a self declaration of companies on environmental features of their products
• Usually address consumers (B2C)
• Mostly address single properties of the product (e.g. share of recycling material,
chlorine free bleaching or CO2e emission)
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