Guidance for Product Category Rule Development.

INGWERSEN, WESLEY; SUBRAMANIAN, VAIRAVAN

The product category rule guidance development initiative

Año: 2013 p. 84

978-0-9897737-0-6

Product claims based on life cycle assessment (LCA) can provide quantitative, full life cycle information on products in a format that can permit comparisons and thereby inform purchasing decisions. In recent years, a number of standards and guides have emerged for making both multi-attribute and single-attribute product claims. The proliferation of these standards and guides has necessitated that additional rules be defined for the LCA and other types of sustainability information for each product category. These additional rules are referred to as Product Category Rules (PCRs). The existence of a number of programs (in many countries) to develop PCRs that cover a wide array of product categories, in conjunction with the emergence of multiple LCA-based product claim standards, has resulted in a lack of cooperation on PCR development. Additionally, these standards and guides do not provide sufficient guidance for creating PCRs. These factors result in inefficiencies in the creation of PCRs, lead to incomparable environmental claims, create market confusion, increase the burden of preparing claims, and reduce the overall credibility of the LCA-based product claims for market applications in business-to-business and business-to-consumer communication