Congrès International sur l’Analyse du Cycle de Vie Lille, Novembre 2011 Seeds4Green www.seeds4green.net Hélène Teulon, Caroline Sorez SARL Gingko21 21F rue Jacques Cartier 78960 Voisins le Bretonneux Helene.teulon@gingko21.com ; caroline.sorez@gingko21.com Keywords: LCA; collaborative platform; eco-label; green purchasing; LCA community Presentation Seeds4Green is a free collaborative internet platform for LCA studies. In 2009 and 2010, Defra (UK) joined forces with Ademe (French Environmental and Energy Management Agency) to sponsor the development of a collaborative LCA website with the technical support of the EU’s Joint Research Centre. Seeds4Green is a wiki platform that aims to provide an easy way gather and share documents linked to environmental sustainability: life cycle assessment studies, environmental product declaration, green purchasing guides, eco-labelling criteria. Both agencies support the transparency and sharing of data and view this as a one of the solutions that allows a wider range of users to acquire LCA information more easily and promote sustainable goods and services. The purpose of the platform is to collaboratively build knowledge on the environmental quality of goods and to ease the diffusion of the results of LCA studies. It provides purchasing guidelines and systemised criteria making green purchasing operational and eco-labels even more transparent and comprehensive. We anticipate that the information stored here could be used by many audiences - from purchasers to eco-designers, businesses, eco-labeling teams within public authorities as well as LCA practitioners, researchers and students throughout the world. More than 200 LCA studies are already available on Seeds4Green. Besides, Seeds4Green is gathering green purchasing guides and eco-labelling criteria as well. Eventually the community will ensure an even higher level of quality for the information shared on the platform. How does it work? Seeds4Green is a free website. Thus, any anonymous person could consult the available studies. However, a user account is mandatory to add any content and to use the collaborative functionalities, such as leaving comments - subscription is for free. Advanced research functions are available in order to target a product or a product category. Research filters match the information fields of the online studies: type of the study, year of publication, comparative feature of a study, language, ISO 14040-44 compliancy… It makes the search for and the analysis of the studies easier. Who could use it? Everybody with interest for environmental evaluation! However, Seeds4Green seems to be a very valuable tool for the professions quoted below. Eco-designers Consultants, managers in eco-design or design team could use Seeds4Green like a context analysis tool. Indeed, Seeds4Green helps at elaborating an environmental survey on a product or a product category, thanks to the summaries of studies. Purchasers Seeds4Green provides to the purchaser the identification of the relevant environmental impacts of a product or a product category. Thus procurement departments could rely on Seeds4Green when writing down the environmental specifications of their product or when discussing with their suppliers on environmental issues. Besides LCA studies, green purchasing guides, eco-design guides and eco-labelling criteria are highly valuable for purchasers. LCA experts and academics For consultants or researchers, Seeds4Green provides a relevant bibliography for environmental evaluation or Life Cycle Assessment studies. Summaries of studies help them to identify the critical points of the product/service they are working on, and thus represent a gain of time, especially for data collection, which is the more time-consuming task when conducting a LCA study. For professors or students, Seeds4Green provides a good exercises/assignments support. Teachers could use Seeds4Green as a grading tool. This approach is rewarding for and appreciated by the students. Future Gingko21 wishes to develop Seeds4Green further in order to make it a complete eco-design tool : to keep on collaboratively adding LCA, Environmental declaration Product (EPD), eco-design guide and eco-labelling criteria and simultaneously to improve the environmental information quantitatively and 24
Congrès International sur l’Analyse du Cycle de Vie Lille, Novembre 2011 qualitatively as well. Gingko21 also wishes to develop the social network functions, in order to provide users with the possibility to easily share information with each other. This project was submitted to the board of Life Cycle Initiative and is under evaluation for support. From our point of view, Seeds4Green is intended to remain a free service. We have many ideas on how to improve Seeds4Green. For that purpose, and in consistency with the collaborative identity of this web platform, we are looking for partners to help us develop it further! 25
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