Fourth Report of Session 2013-14 - European Scrutiny Committee Contents


20   Information on environmental performance

(34830)

8310/13

COM(13) 196

Commission Communication: Building the Single Market for Green Products — Facilitating better information on the environmental performance of products and organisations

Legal base
Document originated9 April 2013
Deposited in Parliament12 April 2013
DepartmentEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs
Basis of considerationEM of 22 April 2013
Previous Committee ReportNone
Discussion in CouncilNo date set
Committee's assessmentPolitically important
Committee's decisionCleared

Background

20.1  The Commission says that, although the Resource Efficiency Roadmap[38] set ambitious milestones for providing incentives to choose the most resource-efficient products through appropriate price signals and clear environmental information, the market uptake of such products is currently low, despite the capacity available to produce them and increasing demand from consumers. It adds that many of the barriers stem from ambiguity as to what constitutes a truly "green" product or organisation, and it has therefore put forward this Communication in order to remove this ambiguity by introducing two methods for measurement and a set of principles for communicating environmental performance.

The current document

20.2  After recalling the international background (including the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)), and the environmental and economic benefits of green products and organisations, the Commission describes the main problems which it is seeking to tackle as being:

  • The number of different methods for measuring and benchmarking environmental performance, where it says that the lack of comparability between them is hindering competition on environmental performance. In particular, it highlights lack of completeness as the biggest failing of existing methods, saying that these can give misleading results if they do not look at the whole product lifecycle and at all environmental impacts, and it also identifies problems with "burden shifting" between lifecycle stages (for example, a product may be very efficient in use, but have significant waste impacts at end of life) or in the use of environmental indicators (for example, an energy efficient product may also contain hazardous materials).
  • The costs for businesses in assessing products against a number of different footprint methods for different countries and sectors, which it says may also be an obstacle to free trade of products across national borders.
  • Europeans consumer attitudes, where a survey suggests that 75% are ready to buy green products, but only 17% had done so in the preceding month, for reasons which include a lack of trust in environmental information, limited availability at affordable products, and difficulties in comparing products and making informed choices.

EU POLICY RESPONSE

20.3  The Commission says that the general objective of EU action in this area should be to reduce uncertainty by improving the availability of clear, reliable and comparable information on the environmental performance of products and organisations, and it proposes a number of steps.

New footprinting methods

20.4  The Commission introduces two new environmental footprinting methods — the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Organisational Environmental Footprint (OEF) — which it describes as science-based and comprehensive. It says that these will eventually support comparability between products and organisations, and that they will introduce several important improvements on existing methods, including a clear identification of potential environmental impact categories which need to be looked at in performing a life cycle assessment; a requirement to quantify data quality; setting minimum data quality requirements; and clearer technical instructions for addressing critical aspects of life cycle assessment.

20.5  The Commission says that methods will be further tested and improved by the development of simplified rules for specific product groups and sectors, and assessed to define whether they can be readily applied by companies, including small businesses, and by policy makers. This will be accompanied by the development of a benchmark product for each category, which will have to be continuously adapted and reviewed in line with technological developments, and used to compare the performance of other products on the market, with the comparison being communicated to consumers.

Testing the methods

20.6  The Commission proposes to organise a three-year testing phase to:

  • set up and validate the process of developing the simplified rules for specific product groups and sectors, including the development of benchmarks;
  • simplify the footprinting process, especially for small and medium sized businesses;
  • test different compliance and verification systems; and
  • test different approaches for business-to-consumer and business-to-business communication.

20.7  It says that it is also open to evaluating alternative footprinting methods and approaches.

Green claims

20.8  The Commission will produce further guidance to promote the use of clear, accurate and relevant environmental claims in marketing and advertising, where it recommends six principles — transparency, availability and accessibility, reliability, completeness, comparability and clarity — to be applied when communicating environmental performance of products and organisations.

Evaluation and future policy

20.9  The Commission proposes to evaluate the pilot before deciding on the next steps, including whether the methods and benchmarks can be applied in policy tools. However, it is looking to incorporate these methods into existing policy tools, including the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme, Green Public Procurement and the EU Ecolabel.

Global context

20.10  The Communication identifies the range of environmental footprinting activity in many other countries outside the EU. It suggests that there will probably be further international activity to develop methods and that the Commission will work with key trading partners to encourage a more co-ordinated approach.

Commission Recommendation

20.11  The Communication also includes a Commission Recommendation encouraging Member States and the private sector to use these new environmental footprinting methods.

20.12  It suggests that Member States should use them for products and organisations in voluntary policies, and in relevant national schemes involving measurement or communication of environmental performance of products or organisations; make efforts to increase the availability of high quality lifecycle data; provide assistance and tools for small and medium sized enterprises; and encourage use of the organisational footprinting method for measuring and communicating performance of organisations.

20.13  The Recommendation suggests that companies should use the methods to measure and communicate performance of their products and organisations; contribute to the review of public databases and populate them with data; and consider providing support to small businesses in their supply chains. Trade associations are asked to promote the methods amongst their membership; contribute to the review of databases; and provide tools and expertise to help small business members. The financial community is asked to promote the use of environmental performance information based on these methods in its assessment of financial risk, and in its assessment of sustainability indices.

20.14  The Recommendation also suggests that schemes for measuring and communicating environmental performance (for example environmental certification and labelling schemes) should use the Commission's footprinting methods as a reference method, and that footprinting studies which are to be used for communication purposes should be verified to check they meet the necessary requirements, so as to ensure the results are credible, and are conducted in a proportionate way.

20.15  Finally, Member States are invited to inform the Commission annually of actions taken in the light of this recommendation, but there is no obligation to do so.

The Government's view

20.16  In his Explanatory Memorandum of 22 April 2013, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord de Mauley) says that, in general, the UK supports the Commission's objective of encouraging a greater uptake of resource-efficient products and greener business practices, but that both the Government and businesses have a number of concerns, relating mainly to the over-complex nature of the proposed methods (although he points out that there is scope to address these during the proposed testing phase, which he sees as an essential part of the process).

20.17  In particular:

  • Although the Government agrees that it is important to consider all life cycle stages and environmental impacts initially, it does not believe that it is necessary to carry out detailed whole life cycle analyses of all environmental impacts for all products and organisations, and is seeking through its Product Sustainability Forum to identify a shortlist of priority products and impacts, towards which action can be targeted;
  • Assessing products against a number of different methods will give rise to costs, but the Commission has not given any indication of what these might be;
  • The Government hopes that further testing and improvement will reduce the complexity of the new footprinting methods, and make them more accessible to business;
  • The Government is not convinced of the need for benchmark products, and observes that there is no discussion of how these would be developed, or how this work would be funded.

20.18  The Minister also says that, although the Government is supportive of the principles in the Commission Recommendation as it affects Member States, further consideration needs to be given to the various aspects addressed to companies and private organisations.

Conclusion

20.19  Although the underlying aim of improving information on environmental performance is clear enough, the methods which the Commission has suggested should be used to achieve this are complex and detailed, and, as the Government has pointed out, much will depend upon the proposed three-year testing phase. Having said that, the Commission Recommendation is non-binding, and participation by companies and others will be voluntary. Consequently, whilst it will be interesting to see how the thinking outlined in this document develops in the light of experience, we do not think it raises any issues which need to be considered further at this stage. We are therefore clearing it.




38   (33173) 14632/11: see HC 428-xlii (2010-12), chapter 17 (22 November 2011). Back


 
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