Learnings of national application of Environmental Footprint in Companies and Organizations

• Companies are working with life cycle thinking for different purposes such as marketing, purchasing, investments and strategies, with the objective to reduce the environmental impact from their products and services. In recent years, LCT has also been important for public policymaking and in public procurement. Methods for environmental footprinting of products and services have been and are being developed all over the world. In its communication Single Market for Green Products1 (SMGP, April 2013), the European Commission proposed actions to overcome problems on the internal market caused by this proliferation of initiatives. The SMGP established two methods, the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) to ensure quality and increase transparency of environmental information and to facilitate comparisons between products’, services’ and organizations’ environmental performance. Swedish Life Cycle Center (SLC) has during the years followed and influenced the Environmental Footprint process, through participation in pilots and in the Technical Advisory Board. SLC provides an arena for industry, authorities, research institutes and universities for Roundtable dialogue on methodology aspects, possible implementation and aspects where we want to influence based on Sweden and Nordic conditions and experiences. This dialogue has resulted in research projects, public seminars, conferences and a national coordination between experts. One of the SLC project, Environmental footprint in Sweden, aims to engage Swedish actors in PEF to better understand how the implementation of PEF as well as related requirements and suggested legislation and directives will affect their work. Case studies are being performed to investigate different methodology aspects from a national perspective, communication learnings and recommendations in order to influence the PEF methodologies. A survey has been performed to identify the current situation for the actual implementation of PEF. Also, EPD and PEF similarities and differences are being investigated, which might lead to increased harmonization.The project will also be strengthening the most important outcomes of PEF; increased knowledge about LCA and products’ environmental impacts and increased collaboration within and between sectors.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)