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Building a Single Market for Green Products
08 July 2013

Building_the_Single_Market_for_Green_ProductsThe European Commissioner for the Environment Janez Potočnik said:"Eco-innovation is not just about a niche of green businesses. Europe's competitiveness in the next decades will depend on its ability to overcome resource constraints. Eco-innovative businesses are the enablers of that transformation for the whole economy."According to this approach the European Commission published the "Green Single Market" package, consisting of a Communication on "Building the Single Market for Green Products," and a Recommendation on methods to measure the environmental footprint of products and organizations. The aim of the initiative is to provide comparable and reliable environmental information, thus building confidence for consumers, business partners, investors and other company stakeholders.

The Single Market for Green Products initiative establishes two methods to measure environmental performance throughout the lifecycle, the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organization Environmental Footprint (OEF).

The Communication was adopted in April and now there will be a three-year testing period for Member States, companies and organizations to trial these methods. Stakeholders (individual companies, industrial associations or any other private, non-governmental or public organizations both from the EU and outside of the EU) can volunteer to lead the process.

The objectives of the pilot phase are:

  • to set up and validate the process of the development of product group-specific rules (Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules – PEFCRs), including the development of performance benchmarks;
  • to test different compliance and verification systems, in order to set up and validate proportionate, effective and efficient compliance and verification systems;
  • to test different business-to-business and business-to-consumer communication vehicles for Product Environmental Footprint information in collaboration with stakeholders.

After the evaluation of the first phase results, a second stage will follow in which the Commission will decide on further policy applications of the PEF and OEF methods, establishing a common life-cycle assessment based on methodological approach to assess the environmental performance of products, services and companies.

The Single Market for Green Products initiative is part of the EU's Resource Efficiency Roadmap and these actions contribute to the implementation of the section related to Sustainable Consumption and Production.

 For more information, feel free to visit the official website

 

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