European regulations, customer expectations, and corporate pledges are calling for improvements in product environmental performance.
Make it green, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. This is great, but how to achieve this and rate the benefit? Without clear evaluation and criteria, any initiative is subject to suspicion of greenwashing. This evaluation is no longer an option: new regulations, such as the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation*, will require the development of a digital passport, for which the main environmental impacts, such as carbon emissions, must be reported.
Planet
The basic evaluation is led by a full analysis regarding any step of product manufacturing, called “cradle to cradle.” Each manufacturing step is evaluated for its impact: materials, components, energy required for manufacturing, logistics, and product end-of-life are carefully assessed. Such evaluation, defined by the ISO 14040 standards, is the life cycle analysis (LCA). As a product specification guarantees product performance, the environmental product declaration (EPD) also provides information from the LCA.
Engineers now have to integrate such evaluation into their work: technical performance and cost are no longer the only goals to consider; the environmental impact at every step must be integrated into the product. Such a change is quite drastic: all design rules are revised with full awareness of the environmental impact of materials and components to make the right decision and call for revisiting all design rules, remembering that a product is not “business as usual” and that disruption is now happening for engineers. The main impact is:
Providing LCA for materials is essential during the design phase to make the right material choices, not just within material classes such as metals, plastics, ceramics, or natural materials, but also across material classes. When considering plastic materials, having available and accurate information on the material is a must. To support our customers, based on internal and external data collection, Benvic can share carbon emission evaluation at the design stage for our polymer compounds: PVC, PP, TPE... based on virgin-based materials or with a recycled fraction. As PVC compounds are our core business, we have pursued the evaluation process by releasing a certified EPD which covers most of our compound types. This service, now provided by Benvic, is crucial to managing the right material choice from the beginning.
Having an LCA is necessary, but it is only a starting point regarding material choice, especially for plastics. Indeed, the question is not just about rating environmental performance but about providing significant improvements to save resources and minimize externalities. This is where the usual “design to cost” is becoming obsolete: generating environmental performance has a cost! Thinking that efforts to decarbonize or conserve resources will cost the same is out of step with reality: evaluations, new manufacturing techniques, and new production options require time and investment. Then the paradigm is the affordability: which solutions are possible, with an acceptable extra cost, and defining a long-term roadmap with increments.
Different solutions are possible with plastic materials: the main ones are either using post-consumer recycled content or bio sourced content. Integrating such solutions needs to be done in relation to the final applications, expected performance, availability, and cost. Usually, one replacement is foreseen to maintain design rules. But mainly, limitations, either performance or cost, could be a bottleneck. In such a case, design or manufacturing habits need to change, especially when prioritizing materials. It has a direct impact on business relationships: direct discussion with the end customer is essential for defining the best pathways to develop new, environmentally friendly products.
Developing LCA and EPD is key to supporting customers but is particularly valuable when a material supplier can provide alternatives, based on recycled or biobased content, to optimize environmental performance at cost, with strong technical support. This is how a supplier can contribute to customer performance: this is how Benvic is behaving.
* Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
