P.E.P. Ecopassport - An ISO 14025 compliant program

Less than 50% of consumers in North America are concerned about climate change. This is one of the conclusions drawn by a recent survey conducted by Nielsen Holdings N.V. Since consumers are less concerned, many companies in the United States and Canada have tended to pay less attention to international environmental initiatives as they evolved. It is hardly a surprising fact then that more and North American manufacturers only discover the new requirements for environmental labelling of their export products after having lost a bid to a European or Asian competitor. Two major types of environmental labelling initiatives are currently expanding: (1) Product environmental declaration, or PED, is a standardized document that describes the environmental impacts of a product such as the raw material depletion, water footprint, water toxicity, carbon footprint, ozone layer depletion as well as other relevant environmental information such as the recycling potential or the energy consumption of the product. The impact categories are based on a life cycle assessment (LCA). PED´s are primarily intended for use in business-to-business communication (2) The environmental labelling of consumer products is also based on a life cycle assessment. These labels are intended to provide consumers with reliable environmental information in order to decide their consumption patterns.