Making the whole life-cycle impact of goods and services will make intelligent consumers better able to choose more sustainable purchases, says DEFRA.
Publishing progress reports on Sustainable Products and Materials and the Waste Strategy environment minister Joan Ruddock said that the Government and industry were working together to green the whole life cycle of products and services – from the raw materials right through to their use and disposal.
DEFRA is piloting ‘Product Roadmaps’, which aim to improve the environmental performance of ten priority products across their life cycles. These include: TVs, domestic lighting, window systems, WCs, and plasterboard.
“Many businesses are already taking positive steps to reduce the environmental impact of their products, and are seeing the real benefits this can have, both for them and their customers. But as fuel prices rise, commodities become scarcer, and families are feeling the pinch, it becomes ever more important for businesses to use resources more efficiently throughout the supply chain, those that don’t will miss out on potential savings, as well as big opportunities for growth,” said Ms Ruddock
The Sustainable Products and Materials report details, for the first time, the action already underway on making products and materials more sustainable throughout their production, use and disposal, across a wide range of products groups including food, electrical appliances and clothing.
Significant achievements in the programme to date include:
n Progress towards saving enough energy to power 1.5 million homes by improving the efficiency of some of the biggest energy using products - set top boxes, external power supply units (such as for laptops, mobile phones, and printers), fridges, washing machines, and dishwashers;
n An initiative with retailers to take inefficient light bulbs off shelves by 2011;
n Leading in Europe to bring the energy used by all standby devices sold in the EU down to 1 watt – and to halve that again in four years after that standard is adopted.
DEFRA expresses confidence that with today’s technology for metering, tariffs and water efficiency, per capita consumption of water can be reduced through cost effective measures, to an average of 130 litres per person per day by 2030. It is hoped, DEFRA adds, that developments in new technology and future innovation will improve the cost-effectiveness of these measures over time and this can drive consumption down further to an average of 120 litres per person per day by 2030.
The Government is also publishing the Policy Analysis and Projections 2008 report – prepared by its Market Transformation Programme which sets out our vision and trajectories for improvement of efficiency of a range of energy-using products including light bulbs, refrigerators, boilers and consumer electronics till 2020 as well as the evidence underpinning our assessment and challenges to industry for the scale of those improvements.
u www.defra.gov.uk