Introduction

The aim of environmental labelling is to provide consumers with clear, harmonized information on the environmental impact of the products they buy.

But right from the start, questions arise: How can we measure the environmental impact of a product? How can we make this impact understandable to consumers?

How can we avoid greenwashing (intentional or unintentional)? How can we be sure that our ratings reflect reality?

What's more, there are a lot of intertwined notions around this subject. Environmental impact, life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental labelling? Is there a difference?

In this article, we'll explain everything there is to know about environmental labelling and what it means for companies.

💡 These initiatives take place at two levels: European and French. They target multiple sectors, including agri-food, textiles and furniture. We will focus on the last two in this article.

🌱 Background, issues and greenwhashing

In a context where environmental issues have become omnipresent, the consumer goods sector is undergoing major change for 3 main reasons:

• Consumers demand greater transparency on the impact of their purchases
• Supply chains face multiple shortages
• Strong competition from Asia and the Middle East has driven prices down sharply.

This has prompted companies to find new avenues of development, one of which has been the promotion of virtuous endeavors (embodied in CSR strategies) and a return to circularity.

Nevertheless, many companies, whether deliberately or through ignorance, have communicated abusively or unjustifiably on these subjects: this is where greenwashing comes in, and with it, questions :

How can consumers trust the information presented to them? How can we distinguish between what is false and what is true? Inaccurate from precise?

This is why environmental display methodologies and regulations have emerged.

🎯Principle

With the aim of providing consumers with real, transparent information, governments, companies and public bodies such as ADEME have taken matters into their own hands, and this has materialized in the form of environmental labelling policies.

According to the French government:

The environmental display of a product or service consists in providing consumers with quantified information on its main environmental impacts, calculated over its entire life cycle.

The idea is simple: based on the environmental impact of a product calculated via LCA(see our article on LCA), we give it a score compared with the rest of the products in the same category on the market (e.g. t-shirts).

LCA is the internationally recognized scientific methodology for measuring the environmental impact of products. In particular, it is ISO-standardized.

However, despite this ISO standard, LCA alone is not strict enough, and results may differ from one study to another.

It is therefore necessary to add further assumptions to ensure the comparability of results. This is why we add principles to be followed (common calculation base) and assumptions specific to the sector (sector-specific references).

The environmental impacts calculated in this way are then translated into an educational format that is easier for consumers to understand (for example, in the form of a score).

As a final step, a third party (certification body) will check a sample of the modeled products to verify the veracity of the product data used by the companies.

French environmental labelling and PEF

Regulatory context

There are currently two environmental display projects:

• French environmental labelling made compulsory by the Climate Law (ADEME has developed an initial methodology, but the final regulatory framework is still under discussion).
• The PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) supported by the European Commission as part of the European Green Deal.

We'll come back to this later, but these two approaches have the same objective and will eventually converge.

How far along are you?

From a regulatory point of view, French environmental labelling is closer to completion than PEF. Indeed, the introduction of environmental labels in the textile sector has been made compulsory by 2023 (Article 2 of the French Climate Law), and the test phases for display methods are almost complete. Furnishings is also one of the priority sectors for which the aim is mandatory implementation by 2025.

At European level, an initial phase of experimentation with the common base for calculating PEF took place between 2013 and 2017, and work on improving the methodology continues.

In parallel with this general methodology, sector-specific guidelines (known as PEFCR or Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules) have been developed, enabling the addition of modeling assumptions specific to each sector of activity.

The Textile PEFCR is currently being tested and should be finalized between 2023 and 2025. Unfortunately, there is as yet no specific PEFCR for the furniture sector.

Differences and convergence

The aim of the French Environmental Label and the PEF is the same: to provide consumers with harmonized environmental information. So why have two separate initiatives?

France wanted to take the lead, notably with ADEME, which has been involved in these issues for a long time. This is why the French methodology was implemented more quickly, and why there are differences with the PEF.

The main differences lie in the fact that the databases used are not the same (Impacts database in France and EF database for the PEF) and that certain modeling assumptions are different.

However, it is important to understand that the basis of calculation is the same for both methodologies, and that the aim is to converge these two initiatives towards a single methodology.

🏬 What does this mean for companies?

In any case, the first step in implementing environmental labelling will always be to measure the environmental impact of your products.

Companies therefore need to be able to carry out lifecycle analyses on their entire product catalog. This requires the ability to do so efficiently, autonomously and automatically.

The role of repositories is also to make the task easier, and among other things to provide default values (called semi-specific data) to fill in information that cannot be found, and quickly arrive at impact results and then the score.

⚠️ Putting effective processes in place can take anywhere from 6 months to 1.5 years. We might as well get started right away!

And Waro?

Waro helps companies prepare for environmental labelling. Today, the platform complies with French environmental display standards (for both furniture and textiles). We are also awaiting the release of the EF 3.0 database to finalize the integration of the PEF methodology into the tool.

💡 Our philosophy is not to propose a particular display methodology. It is to enable companies to easily adapt to the final methodology so that consumers have the right to reliable, transparent information.

The advantages of using a platform such as Waro are :

• Refine models over time (in particular by starting with default values and then refining these models)
• Automate data collection by connecting to internal management software containing product data
• To be able to switch from model versions compatible with Affichage Environnemental Français to PEF-compatible products in just a few clicks.

To find out more about Waro and how we help companies prepare for environmental labelling (and much more besides) you can visit our website here or book an appointment.

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