DF 56 — Are Environmental Declarations of Products and Organisations the way to harmonise LCAs?  

Tuesday, September 9th, 2014, Zürich (in English).

In the last years, several initiatives were taken in order to harmonise the LCA methodology for products and organisations. A recent example is the EU environmental footprint initiative “Single Market for Green Products”. It is a voluntary initiative with the goal of enabling comparison of environmental performances between similar products and companies active in a similar sector.

In this context methodological guidelines are developed such as PEF, PEFCR, OEF, OEFCR and ENVIFOOD protocol. Which other initiatives aiming at harmonisation of LCA are currently under development? Are the expectations of the stakeholders met? Is harmonisation of LCA on track?

The discussion forum will give the floor to European and Swiss legislators, LCA researcher, LCA practitioners and industries participating in the 3-year pilot phase of the initiative, to discuss the harmonisation of measuring and communicating life cycle environmental performance of products and organisations.

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DF 57 — Life cycle assessment in the building sector: analytical tools, environmental information and labels. 

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014, Zürich (in English)

Buildings are an important consumer of energy and an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. In the last decade buildings and their environmental impacts are getting more and more attention.

Analytical tools are being developed, environmental information based on environmental product declarations is being standardised and several sustainability and environmental labelling schemes are being used in Switzerland, including BREEAM, LEEDS, DGNB, SGNB, SNBS, and Minergy-eco. The labels partly rely on life cycle assessment data or environmental product declarations.

The discussion forum will provide a systematic overview on different tools, information and labelling schemes, highlighting common aspects and main differences.