Dear Reader,

For ECO Platform 2018 was an eventful year. We changed the structure of our Organization to enhance Compliance and Governance. With our smaller Board strategical work is facilitated, while we improved transparency at the same time by our new ways of reporting. All members were invited to our yearly General Assembly in Brussels in May as well as to our meeting in Milan in September, where we took further seminal decisions for our future activities. We are going to report about our new achievements in this and forthcoming newsletters.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in ECO Platform and to thank all those who actively participated in our activities for their contribution in 2018. We wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2019.

ECO Platform’s updated homepage

If you visited ECO Platform online in the last months, you will have immediately seen the changed appearance of our website. In this first update, along with the visual changes some technical improvements were made together with the adaption of the page according to our new work structure and to new requirements from the GDPR.

But the most relevant changes are still to come. ECO Platform decided in the last year that some relevant functional and digital improvements would be made to provide added-value to the web-site. This includes:

• a newsletter archive
• an FAQ section
• a PCR registry
• an update of our EPD registry
• and an IT-supported Audit Tool

You will be informed about the progress and step-wise implementation of these improvements in the coming year.

Position Paper on PEF and participation in consultation of EC

In 2013, the European Commission started to develop a methodology for Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) to be eventually used in upcoming policies and legislation on product-related issues as a vital component in its 2020 programme for a “Single Market for Green Products”. The PEF work is based on a number of ISO standards for LCA and EPD. A large part of the work has focused on developing “Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules, PEFCR”, for some 25 different product categories. These pilot studies are now completed and the PEF work has entered a transition phase where all results and experiences gained so far are being evaluated. The developments of PEF have been followed with great interest, also in other countries outside Europe as a possibility to facilitate the comprehensiveness of environmental information of products, especially to end-consumers.

The Commission recently launched a public survey to gather information from industry, practitioners, public administrations and other stakeholders as a part of  the transition phase of the PEF methodology. As an umbrella organization for EPD Program Operators and a platform for all other relevant stakeholders like European Trade Associations, Green Building Counicls or Rating Scheme Operators as well as LCA experts, ECO Platform has sent their input to improve the application of PEF in Europe, focused in the main expertise of our organization, and a reliable verification of LCA-data based on the existing EPD method.

The position of ECO Platform is that for construction products the European Standard EN 15804 should be the basis for any LCA, as a consensus achieved methodology with industry and other stakeholders in the European Committee for Standardization (CEN). The EPD, considered as a neutral dataset, should be used when applying any scenarios or benchmarks. This offers flexible use-scenarios of the EPD datasets for various use-types, avoiding multiple efforts for industry. Next to using the EPD data for PEF, it could be, for example, used for Building-LCA Tools in Green Building Rating Shemes or in BIM as well as input data for any eco-labelling or individual scenarios with own benchmarks for public and private procurement.

In regard to verification, the current structure of EPD Programme Operators managing the procedures, the qualification of verifiers, the development for the PCR and other tasks association with the assessment of conformity has proven to be sound and solid, with thousands of verified EPD in Europe according to EN 15804. The verification procedures for environmental footprints should consider the experience from industry and EPD Programme Operators in the development of rules and criteria for the verification of the PEF results.

ECO Platform is willing to cooperate with the Commission in the development of a communication system ensuring the provision of reliable environmental information for products in the fields of construction products, as well as electric, electronic and HVAC-R.

The full reply from ECO Platform to the survey and our position paper can be found on our homepage.

Dates and events

19.02. 2019      Web Board Meeting (only Board Members)

26.02. 2019      Board Update Call (for all members)

1.-2.04. 2019    Board Meeting, Stockholm (only Board Members)

2.-3.04. 2019    InData Group Meeting, Stockholm

10.04. 2019      Board Update Call (for all members)

14.05.2019       Open Board Meeting followed by General Assembly, Brussels

Around Sep 18, 2019 our next ECO EPD event will be held in Angers, France

c/o Construction Products Europe AISBL
Boulevard du Souverain 68, Box 1
1170 Bruxelles
Belgium

phone: +49 201 - 3203172
info@eco-platform.org
www.eco-platform.org

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