European distributor Manutan has launched an environmental impact scorecard for its PPE and furniture products.
The products are noted on a scale of A-E, which is fairly standard. However, the actual scoring is based on the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA), from the raw materials used right through to disposal. This is something that is more complex to measure than some of the other environmental notation systems out there, but is aimed at presenting a comprehensive picture of a product’s total impact over and above its carbon footprint.
The starting points for the LCA measurements are: a) the European Union’s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) for PPE items, and b) the furniture assessment criteria developed by French organisation ADEME. These benchmarks allow the calculation of environmental impacts based on 12-16 criteria, which include: the effect on climate change, resource depletion, fine particle emissions and the impact on human health.
After a successful pilot phase, Manutan is rolling out the scoring system to 25,000 products in the furniture category. The goal is to deploy it across all 700,000 products in the entire catalogue.
Manutan CEO Xavier Guichard commented: “Faced with growing environmental challenges, constantly evolving legislation and customer expectations, it is now essential for companies to gear their strategy towards a sustainable model. As a major European player in B2B e-commerce, we want to support our partners in this process.”
The PEF approach is something that Lyreco has been using for a number of years. It also underpinned the methodology of European trade association SOFEA, which closed in 2019.
Paris, France
