Abstract
According to ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006, the carbon footprint of products (CFPs) is the system to calculate the category indicator of the targeted product for the global warming potential or “climate change” in life cycle assessment.
There are many LCA studies focusing on greenhouse emissions. However, it is quite new to show consumers the calculation results on the shelves of supermarkets.
CFP started in the UK, and many countries followed. In this chapter, the background of CFP, the aims, and the relation to type 3 label known as ISO 14025:2006 are described in Sect. 2, followed by the general procedures of CFP and methodological issues of CFP.
As the consumers can now compare CFPs directly in the store, it is needed to clarify the rules for the calculation and communication of CFP. In order to develop the internationally harmonized methodology of CFP, ISO/TS 14072 was published in 2013. In Sect. 3, the main discussion points are introduced, which were compromised when ISO/TS 14067:2013 was published.
In Sects. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, the experiences of CFP in the UK, France, Japan, Korea, and Thailand are introduced.
CFP is the evaluation tool of the product focusing only on global warming, designed as “single criteria.” Recently, the evaluation tool of the organization focusing on global warming has been paid attention, which is called “Organizational CFP” (ISO/TR 14069:2013). Moreover, the tools to evaluate more environmental categories than only global warming of the product and/or the organization are called “multicriteria.”
In this chapter, the current status of CFP in the world is overviewed, and the outlook of CFP in the future is discussed. One of the reasons why CFP obtained such high attention in the society is that the consumers can see and compare CFPs directly in the store. CFP is expected to be a communication tool between producers and consumers. This is true in the present and will be true in the future.
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Notes
- 1.
Publicly Available Specification 2050:2008, specification for the assessment of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services addresses the single impact category of global warming to provide a standardized and simplified implementation of process LCA methods for assessing GHG emissions from products.
- 2.
PAS 2060: Specification for the demonstration of carbon neutrality.
Abbreviations
- ACFN:
-
Asia Carbon Footprint Network
- AHG:
-
Ad hoc group
- BSI:
-
British Standards Institution
- CBO:
-
Carbon Business Office
- CFP:
-
Carbon footprint of products
- CSR:
-
Corporate social responsibility
- EF:
-
GHG emission factor
- EPD:
-
Environmental product declaration
- GHG:
-
Greenhouse gases
- GWP:
-
Global warming potential
- IPCC:
-
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- PAS:
-
Publicly available specification
- PCRs:
-
Product category rules/environmental product declarations
- SCP:
-
Sustainable consumption and production
- SKU:
-
Stock keeping units
- TGO:
-
Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organization
- UNCED:
-
United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development
- UNESCAP:
-
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
- UNFCCC:
-
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
- WBCSD:
-
World Business Council for Sustainable Development
- WRI:
-
World Resources Institute
- WTO CTE:
-
Committee on Trade and Environment of the World Trade Organization
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Acknowledgment
We want to acknowledge the contribution for GHG Protocol and Scope 3 from Ms. Cynthia Cummis of WRI and Mr. Masayuki Kanzaki of JEMAI for type 3 label. They deserve a lot of thanks as they acted like coauthors in providing valuable information.
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Inaba, A. et al. (2016). Carbon Footprint of Products. In: Finkbeiner, M. (eds) Special Types of Life Cycle Assessment. LCA Compendium – The Complete World of Life Cycle Assessment. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7610-3_2
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