EU and France - hand-in-hand?

Disappointment in the slow-down in French momentum in environmental labeling was palpable last summer. The French legislature struck down attempts to force consumer goods companies to label all their products largely because the agencies in charge of deciding the tactical application of the mandate were so far behind their own milestones and deadlines. The process is so "democratic" that each meeting and each presentation often ends with a loud sigh with very little progress or resolutions being found.

The biggest obstacles are reliable data and an agreed-upon methodology. Should food companies be required to measure their water consumption, for example? Well, in principle it's a nice idea but in reality it's not easy to do and it's not even that reliable as a measure of environmental impact. Carbon is the easy one, or is it? And what about toxicity, eutrophication, land-use change, sequestration, and other more sophisticated and scientific measures that could have enormous impacts on how a product is measured.

Well, it turns out that the EU just couldn't wait any longer. The French are currently allowing 168 companies (or consortiums of companies) to "experiment" with measurement and labeling with very little guidance on how or what to measure. Meanwhile, the EU - who up until recently was saying that they were going to wait until France decided on a framework and then build on that - have decided to go ahead with their own experimentation. And while at first glance that might sound counterintuitive and even more confusing, in reading the EU's guidelines and stated goals, seems like it might actually result in a more concrete outcome that France's efforts in the same area.

The EU has restricted their project to only 10 participants. They also have stated their guidelines for measurement (the ILCD handbook and the JRC methodology), and whether we agree or not with their methodologies at least there is one to follow. Their results are due by the end of 2011 and even though France's project is due to be finished a few months earlier, my prediction is that the EU will actually lead France in the final accounting of this work, rather than the other way around.

LCA Practitioners Survey

We've just completed a survey of LCA Practitioners worldwide. Here is a sampling of some of the most interesting results.

The largest majority of LCA practitioners are currently focused on process and product level LCA:

Surprisingly, not everyone is being asked to follow an LCA standard:

Among our survey participants, food & beverage and agriculture stand out as the leading industries among these LCA practitioners:

Carbon is still the only international standard and requirement for LCA measurement:

More than 1/3 of LCA Practitioners are still relying on Excel for their analyses:

Primary data gathering is still the biggest headache for LCA practitioners:

LCAs are being used for a wide range of needs, with R&D and innovation leading: