What data do you need to collect to prepare for environmental labelling?
Data management is one of the most time-consuming aspects of implementing environmental labelling. What data needs to be collected?
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Paul Cappuccio
July 6, 2023
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Data management is one of the most time-consuming aspects of implementing environmental labelling. What data needs to be collected?
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With the gradual adoption of the Climate Law, the deployment of environmental labelling is currently driving the textile and furniture industries.
The time-consuming nature of the process and the complexity of setting it up are often at the heart of discussions surrounding this topical subject. The problem is simple:
What data needs to be collected, and how can the approach be deployed across an entire product catalog to comply with regulatory requirements without spending a colossal amount of time on it?
In response to this issue, this article provides practical advice on how to implement environmental labelling in three sections:
Collecting product information throughout the life cycle is often one of the most time-consuming aspects of implementing environmental labelling.
To facilitate the work of the brands, the environmental display methodologies and sector-specific standards (ADEME or PEF) clearly define the mandatory data to be collected and the default data available.
There are two main types of data used in a life cycle assessment (LCA).
The data to be collected as part of the environmental display is therefore specific.
💡 The average data available are often majoring data. Companies with better knowledge of their value chain will therefore be rewarded with a better result.
To ensure the comparability of results between companies, sector-specific environmental display guidelines (see our article on the subject) specify the specific data to be collected and the default values to be used.
It's important to note that from one sector to another, and from one product category to another, the data to be collected will differ.
To illustrate the above definitions with a concrete case, here is the information to be collected for each life-cycle stage as part of the environmental display.
For raw materials :
Information on raw materials is specific data only. It is therefore necessary to collect information on the raw materials used in the T-shirt, in particular the list of raw materials, their weight (or composition in % if the weight of the finished product is known) and the origin of each material.
⚠️ It is essential to know the weight of each material. Here are two options:
🧶 For textile materials (natural or synthetic), information must be collected at yarn level. All you need to know is where the yarn is spun.
For manufacturing processes :
The location of each manufacturing stage is the main information to be collected as part of the environmental display. In fact, sector-specific reference systems offer average data on the energy consumption of each stage, waste rates, etc...
At the very least, the manufacturing processes to be taken into account are weaving/knitting, finishing and garment making.
As detailed in the table, default values are available for loss rates and energy consumption for each manufacturing stage.
🏭 To find out exactly how much energy a manufacturing stage consumes, all you need to know is the time a part spends on a machine and the power of the machine (in KW).
For transport stages :
Environmental display methodologies take two types of transport into account:
Fortunately, once the locations of each manufacturing stage are known, there are default values available for transport. For example, sourcing a product from China to France defaults to 20,000 km by boat and 800 km by truck.
For example, we obtain the following transport diagram:
To fill in more specific data, the information to be retrieved is as follows:
🚢 The impact of transport is directly related to the weight of the product transported, apart from mileage and means of transport, so there's no need to collect any other information.
Default values for fill rate / empty return rate are also available.
By default, delivery of a product from the warehouse to the end consumer in France is 500 km by truck (if the warehouse is located in France).
Other stages in the product life cycle (use and end-of-life phases):
For the use and end-of-life phases of products, default data are provided by the methodologies. There is therefore no need to collect specific data on these stages.
As this example shows, the average data provided by the standards makes it easier to set up an environmental display, by limiting the volume of data to be collected. On the other hand, these data are often overstated, and won't allow you to make the most of your eco-design efforts.
It is therefore becoming strategic for brands to have a better understanding of their value chain, in order to use more specific data.
Integrating more specific data has three major advantages:
A data quality score is currently being developed to transparently inform consumers about the ratio between specific and average data.
Now that you know what data you need to collect to prepare for environmental labelling, one of the big questions is how to collect and structure this information so as to be able to deploy the approach across your entire product catalog.
To ensure the success and longevity of environmental labelling projects, it is essential to be able to involve the company's various stakeholders, in particular suppliers and internal teams.
In particular, internal teams will enable you to quickly identify what data is already available internally, and what additional data needs to be collected from your suppliers.
Suppliers :
Collecting traceability information very often means involving the various suppliers in your value chain. There are two approaches to this:
🔮 To improve the response rate of suppliers, it is possible to share part of the value created with them, for example by enabling them to directly identify the eco-design levers they can implement.
Many of our customers are currently thinking about upgrading their data systems to facilitate the deployment of environmental labelling. In the front line of this transformation, PLMs (Product Lifecycle Management) have a central role to play.
For this reason, it is important to structure your PLM by directly integrating the various attributes required for environmental labelling.
🧑💻 Environmental display tools generally offer APIs to connect directly to PLMs and automatically retrieve data.
The diagram below summarizes the ideal operation:
🤯 Collecting and structuring data is usually a big job in the first year. But if you get it right, you'll save a lot of time for future collections!
To link traceability information to a product's environmental impact, several tools have appeared on the market.
A number of public tools have been developed to raise companies' awareness of environmental labelling. These include Ecobalyse, which is currently developing a calculator for the textile sector, and the Eco-meuble tool for the furniture sector.
🤩 The Ecobalyse simulator documentation provides an overview of the data to be collected for the various stages in the life cycle of a textile product.
In addition to these public tools, private tools such as Waro have been developed in recent years. The development of these tools has, among other things, made it possible to roll out environmental labelling more rapidly, by enabling :
Private tools are therefore the ideal partners for implementing a scalable solution for rolling out environmental labelling today.
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