Requirements on Consumer Information about Product ... - ANEC

Consumer Information about PCF
Allocation in open loop recycling
When using materials and products for new production processes and their transformation
into other, new products (open loop recycling), a 50:50 allocation should be applied, unless
different assumptions have been taken based on product-specific aspects.
7.2 General recommendations to legislation and standardisation
Even though the interest of consumers and other stakeholders in PCF is not necessarily
focussed on the communication of specific PCF figures there can still be observed a general
increasing concern regarding climate change and possible – individual – courses of action.
General recommendations to the legislator should therefore consider the following points:
Other environmental effects should not be disregarded
As stated before the narrow approach to only focus on greenhouse gas emissions bears the
risk to overlook relevant other environmental impacts or even lead to wrong conclusions that
increase negative environmental effects in the worse case (e.g. in the case of electricity).
Therefore screening analyses of other environmental impacts must be included in a PCF.
The PCF is a fundamental indicator for some products or product groups. Still a
comprehensive sustainability assessment of products cannot be carried out on the basis of
the PCF alone. Other useful evaluation tools like life cycle assessments, eco-efficiency
analyses and sustainability analyses can be used to complete the picture.
The screening of relevant other environmental impact categories besides global warming
potential must thus be an obligatory component of a Carbon Footprint study.
ISO 14024 Type I labels like the Blue Angel should be retained as lead labels
The above considerations clearly support retention of eco-labels in accordance with ISO
14024 (Type 1), such as the Blauer Engel eco-label, as lead labels. The advantages of
ecolabels over CO2 labels are summarized again below (the arguments apply both to the
Blauer Engel and by analogy to other national eco-labels and the European eco-label):
- easily understood and reliable information for consumers: from an overall
environmental perspective an eco-labelled product is clearly better than comparable
products;
- inclusion of all relevant environmental and health aspects;
- identification of criteria on the basis of LCAs and eco-toxicological assessments;
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