Assessing product sustainability

Environmental assessment of materials should ideally be based on a detailed evaluation of emissions, resource use and all other impacts of the actual products proposed for use in specific situations and against broad based, quantified environmental criteria. This kind of process is undertaken in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for example, and a process for LCA’s is codified in a set of international standards {International Organisation for Standardisation, 1997 #59}.  

Unfortunately due to the significant complexity of LCA it is not currently possible or practical to use it for every material selection decision, especially as there is a lack of generally available data, so the principles of life-cycle thinking and LCA science are integrated into the ecospecifier assessment methodology.

These include:

• Looking beyond only ‘manufacturer’ or ‘in-use’ stage impacts, to include all relevant stages from raw material extraction right through to disposal, recovery and re-use
• Consideration of a broad group of environmental and health issues, but with a focus on areas of dominant impacts
• Consideration of the functionality, longevity, maintenance requirements, re-usability, design for deconstruction, recyclability, extended producer responsibility and ‘closed loop’ materials characteristic of the product in its evaluation

The approach taken to ecospecifier therefore is to:

• Present as much information as possible about a product in a clear format that encourages consideration of appropriate criteria
• Provide decision-making guides for common categories of products that enable the decision maker to assess the relative importance of the benefits and disadvantages of a product for an application
• Provide transparent differential levels of information about products with clear indicators about the depth of assessment used, reference materials, test data sighted and expert assessment used
• Ensure an ongoing, constantly updated and increasing depth of analysis and life cycle assessment to provide specific guidance to users as the industry knowledge base increases
• If it is apparent that a product provides sufficient merit to be included on ecospecifier, it will be included in basic form (up to 200 words and all contact details), without cost to manufacturers.

Manufacturers, once their products are accepted for listing, can elect to add further detail via an ‘enhanced content’ [EC] listing that ensures both the public and subscribers see the information as detailed in  Standards recognition & assessment types.