GfE: advice on future declaration of environmental characteristics

Glass for Europe has published a position paper discussing the rules on declaring environmental characteristics of construction products under the new Construction Products Regulation (CPR). The paper:

• Highlights the issues with current plans to use ‘worst-case’ scenarios both in terms of impact on the quality of the data and the burdens for the flat glass value chain.

• Supports using existing Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) rules for declaring essential environmental characteristics under the new CPR.

• Proposes adjustments to the EPD rules to better address current concerns than using worst-case scenarios.

Flat glass production entails hundreds of thousands of different products manufactured and processed by various stakeholders and sites. Once applied to all products and manufacturers, the complexity of using worst-case scenarios risks generating high burdens and costs without making the information shared with customers more reliable.

Glass for Europe is committed to engaging with stakeholders involved in implementing the CPR’s sustainability provisions to ensure that customers, processors and manufacturers can deal with well-adjusted rules.

It is a priority for the building glass sector to ensure the quality of the environmental data reported to customers, using representative averages, whilst meeting the requirements of the CPR and the concerns of the authorities. This paper is the association’s contribution to the current discussions.

Reacting to this publication, Justin Loup, Glass for Europe’s Technical Regulations and Product Policy Manager, said, “LCA experts have been developing rules to declare reliable environmental indicators for building glass for over twenty years. The new rules should build on this long-lasting work.”