Requirements on Consumer Information about Product ... - ANEC

Consumer Information about PCF
electricity from nuclear power plants, cogeneration of heat and power, restriction of electricity
from coal and lignite power plants etc.
To exclusively communicate CO2e emissions bears the risk to favour electricity from nuclear
power plants. Therefore it must strictly be avoided to communicate solely CO2e figures.
6.8 Category 3 (products with relevance to climate at production phase)
Example 4: Paper
Paper belongs to the category of products that do not use energy in the usage phase and
that do not influence energy demand of other products during their usage phase. However,
they are still CO2e relevant due to impacts of production.
The production phase dominates the life cycle, during use impacts are marginal (e.g.
printing). There are hints that meanwhile virgin paper production in some cases of best
available technology may even have a lower carbon footprint then recycling paper.
Consumers purchase ready made products like newspapers and books (purchase decision
bases on content), as well as paper for printing or copy purposes (purchase decision bases
on quality of the paper itself).
There exist approaches, e.g. rankings and rating systems:
• Type I label like EU Ecolabel, Nordic Swan and Blue Angel certify paper (e.g. tissue
paper). Focus is on the derivation of fibres relating to forestry, on recycling paper (Blue
Angel) resp. the use of chemicals. In the EU Ecolabel there is a limit set for CO2
emissions from non renewable sources in production (including electricity). The
currently valid criteria limit CO2 emissions to 1000 kg/t for integrated paper mills and
1100 kg/t for non-integrated paper mills. They are under revision at present.
• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) also certifies paper.
CO2e emissions connected to the life cycle of paper are of additional help as they indicate
e.g. the share of renewable energy sources used for paper production.
The improvement potential from virgin to recycling paper has decreased in the last years but
is still significant (see Ifeu 2006). However, there are some new enzymatic techniques that
seem to significantly reduce the demand of energy and chemicals of virgin paper production
(Skals et al. 2008). Therefore, in the future the distance might even further diminish.
At the moment, generic data are available that allow a rather general but significant
distinction of different paper grades, e.g. a distinction between recycling paper and virgin
paper or groundwood paper. Product specific data are not available at the moment and
therefore it is difficult to judge the range of product differentiation within one paper grade.
The variability of PCF results due to seasonal changes etc. should be low. There is probably
some variety between different paper mills.
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