Within the framework for a Single Market for Green Products Initiative the European Union (EU) wants to provide with the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisational Environmental Footprint (OEF) a range of methods and guides as well as initiatives to prove a products or companies green credentials.
To overcome the current stream of sometimes incomparable and diverse environmental information the Single Market for Green Products proposes the following steps:
- establishing two methods to measure environmental performance throughout the lifecycle (PEF; OEF)
- recommending the use of these methods to Member States, companies, private organisations and the financial community through a Commission Recommendation;
- it announces a three-year testing period to develop product- and sector-specific rules through a multi-stakeholder process;
- it provides principles for communicating environmental performance, such as transparency, reliability, completeness, comparability and clarity;
- it supports international efforts towards more coordination in methodological development and data availability.
(Source: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/smgp/index.htm)
For the Product Environmental Footprint currently a draft methodology as well as pilots are currently in place (as of Aug 2014).
The draft document which is available as PDF and contains
- general considerations
- role of PEF category rules and requirments of developing those rules
- definition of the scope of the study
- compiling and recording the resource use and emission profile
- interpretation of PEF results
- PEF reports
- as well as several examples on documentation/data management plans/….
Further reading:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/smgp/index.htm
