Environmental certificates for consumer durable products

probe

It would perhaps be intelligent to have a requirement for manufacturers of consumer durable products (among others) to provide an environmental certificate which one could read prior to making a purchase decision. Cars, washing machines and other “kitchen appliances”, TVs, heating and cooling systems, PCs and related kit……

Mercedes Benz publishes an environmental certificate for each car “class” on its website. It includes the material composition, technical data on emissions, life cycle assessment, use of renewable materials, design issues for recycling and dismantling info, avoidance of use of hazardous materials, (the gas emissions and toxic smell of chemicals in some new cars is appalling pollution and no doubt unhealthy for the vehicle’s occupants).

Life cycle assessments are particularly useful in terms of value for money. Eg does one buy a washing machine that will last 5 years for €300 (won’t name any brands) or one that will likely last 30 years and costs perhaps €800 (eg Miele). Whatever about technological obsolescence and fashion when it comes to computers and cars, many domestic gadgets have little or no technical obsolescence issues. Also factor in the lost time waiting for a repair man to call and the right parts to arrive to repair the product that is “made to a price”.

Merc’s certificate also touches on safety issues (eg on the B class, the brake lights “strobe flash” (compared with lighting continuously) when the brake pedal gets enough pressure above a certain speed, and this reduces driver reaction time in vehicles following behind. It is a different message (“I’ve touched the brake pedal to slow down” –v- “I’m braking as hard as I can”). The hazard warning lights also switch on automatically when the car is stopped from 70 km/h+ to 0. Proper use of hazard warning lights varies from country to country. The Dutch are good in my experience. French and Irish drivers are dozy and frequently forget to switch them on. The car manufacturers need to design in safety by causing them to switch on automatically under certain conditions. In Ireland and Britain they get misused occasionally as an appalling stupid “thank you” messaging abuse of what is an emergency signal – reducing the credibility and urgency of the message in real emergencies. Would you pull the emergency cord in a train to say “thank you” to the train driver following behind?

Pile-ups and accidents bad for the environment as well as people’s health…. Perhaps they might also include a warning when driving too close to a vehicle in front? Reduce the number of vehicles prematurely reaching end of life, reduce the accident costs for health systems, accident related traffic delays etc.

While several companies have ISO 14000 type certification projects, it would be useful if they were legally required in certain types of product with standardized presentation procedures (eg an “environment” link on their product website to make it easy to find the information when shopping around).

http://www3.mercedes-benz.com/fleet-sales/en/Environmental_Certfikate_B_Class.pdf
http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_14000_essentials

Capt'n Midnight

Actually it would be far easier to just specify the design life of the product.
eg:
5 years
100,000 miles
7,000 hours of operation
200 insertion cycles


Consumers will then choose to buy fewer but more durable products , resulting in a lower use of materials.
Savy consumers could also compare the energy rating to get a truer TCO which would depend on usage.


Then have EU law for class action suits if it's found that the average life of the product don't meet that advertised.