Authors: Karin Eufinger (Centexbel), Jane Gardner (ERFMI)

Executive summary

This section provides an overview of standards, certificates and labels that are already established or in development as they relate to the CISUFLO project. The standards identified address uniform technology, design for recycling guidelines to facilitate the treatment of the product at end-of-life, end-of-life material identification and secondary raw material quality assessment.

The Commission has addressed gaps in standardisation regarding quality of recyclates, design for recyclability and definition of recycled content as part of the deliverables of the Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA) which was initiated in 2019. The result of this work is a standardisation request from the Commission to technical committees within CEN, to deliver relevant standards for specific products and product categories. CEN TC134, covering resilient, textile, laminate and modular multilayer floor coverings, will be a partner in the execution of the standardisation request. The uniform criteria developed via standards can then be used to develop labels and certification systems that certify that certain products and systems have been produced according to defined standards.

There are more than 455 different certificates and labels relating to sustainability in operation globally. In Europe alone there are 231 labels, 89 of which relate to construction products and buildings. The report focuses on those certificates and labels which relate to products covered by CISUFLO, as well as those that cover recycled content, design for recycling and recyclability.

The sheer volume of labels makes it very difficult for end users, manufacturers and recyclers to identify those that are most relevant to their products and most widely accepted. The report recommends that the criteria which relate to recyclability, recycled content and design for recycling should be added to the Environmental Product Declaration system, which is already widely used within the flooring sector. This would ease the burden on manufacturers and provide end users with one document focusing on the entire lifecycle of a product.

Glossary

European standard (EN): developed by an ESO.

European Standardisation organisation (ESO): CEN, CENELEC, ETSI

International standard: standard developed by ISO.

Standardisation deliverable: standard, technical specification, technical report, work shop agreement, publicly available specification. (In the document will use the expression “standard” for all standardisation deliverables.)

Circular Economy: A systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. It is based on three principles, driven by design: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature. It is underpinned by a transition to renewable energy and materials. Transitioning to a circular economy entails decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. This represents a systemic shift that builds long-term resilience, generates business and economic opportunities, and provides environmental and societal benefits.¹

Note: Quite often Circular Economy is abbreviated CE, which is confusing with CE marking. A better way to abbreviate Circular Economy would be C.E.

CE marking: The letters ‘CE’ appear on many products traded on the extended Single Market in the European Economic Area (EEA). They signify that products sold in the EEA have been assessed to meet high safety, health, and environmental protection requirements.²

Note: Construction products put on the market in Europe need to be CE marked.

Standardisation gaps

The Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA)³ was initiated in 2019 to identify standardisation gaps in plastics recycling. Construction products, and specifically floor coverings, were one of the key products identified and analysed. From this initiative the EC developed a standardisation request for plastics recycling and recycled plastics⁴, which is in its finalisation stage at the moment of writing this deliverable. CEN TC249 and CEN TC134 are both involved in the development of the standardisation request and will be partners in its execution.

CEN TC350 SC1 “Circular Economy in the Construction Sector” is also performing a gap analysis for construction products. Their work started in 2022 with establishing a first preliminary work item:

WI00350039 Circular economy in the construction sector – Framework, principles, and definitions (preliminary)

The CISUFLO project is not following CEN TC350 directly, but is informed via its liaison with CEN TC134 (which has a liaison with CEN TC350).

CISUFLO also aims to identify any additional standardisation gaps not covered and will bring these forward in the technical committees in which CISUFLO experts are involved.

Certification, auditing systems and related labels

The Ecolabel Index (ecolabelindex.com), the largest global directory of ecolabels, lists 455 ecolabels in 199 countries and across twenty-five industries. In Europe alone there are 231 ecolabels listed of which 89 are linked to buildings and building products.

The labels are aimed at various audiences including corporate purchasers, retailers, consumers, manufacturers, specifiers, and designers. Some certify products, others certify companies or organisations. They are all based on a varying number of national, international or European standards.

Many of them are based on ISO14021:2016 Environmental labels and declarations – Self-declared environmental claims (Type II environmental labelling) or ISO 22095:2020 Chain of custody – General terminology and models, defining the approach taken to control inputs and outputs and associated information in a particular chain of custody system, for example to track recyclates from the end-of-life of a product right through their use in a new product.

The sheer number and complexity of environmental certificates and labels makes it difficult for manufacturers as well as end users of products to navigate their way through.

This report focuses on labels and certification schemes which relate to recycled content, design for recycling or traceability of materials through the supply chain. It looks at certifications and labels relevant to plastics, textile, and wood in line with the products that are part of the CISUFLO project.

Traceability of recyclates through the supply chain is becoming increasingly important as we move from a linear economy to a circular economy in Europe, where the EU Green Deal launched by the Commission in 2019 is driving change on a systemic level. For this purpose, several new approaches are being developed and tested, including an incorporation of the blockchain technology into the existing tracing techniques. 

The EU Green Deal is the key initiative of the European Commission to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and to decouple economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. A large number of policies, legislations and initiatives have grown from this vision since 2019. Recycled content requirements are a key for the development of circular systems and reuse of resources and many of the initiatives currently under consideration by the EU, focus on minimum recycled content targets. This includes the proposed revision of the Construction Products Regulations, which foresees in Article 22 the obligation to declare mandatory sustainability characteristics, including minimum recycled content. Table 1 of this section highlights some of the certifications and labels that are currently operating in Europe and globally which look at recycled content and lifecycle assessment of products. It also covers sustainability certifications and labels that apply to textile floor coverings, wood, and plastics.

All these labels either look at the lifecycle of products using lifecycle assessment standards, or they look in particular at ensuring and certifying the quality and contents of recyclates in products placed on the market.

This is important with regard to the Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA), a Commission initiative to encourage industry to pledge the use of ten million tonnes of recycled plastics in new products placed on the market in the EU by 2025.

These targets require robust auditing and certification schemes to verify recycled content and ensure quality of recyclates. Standards define how to calculate the content and define quality and certification and audit schemes serve to verify the correctness of claims made by the manufacturers.

The Circular Plastics Alliance has set up a monitoring system to monitor the flow of recyclates from the recycler to their use in new products at the convertor site. The CPA has approved two platforms for collecting data in compliance with the CPA monitoring rules and methodology

• MORE, managed by EuPC, collecting data only on the use of recycled plastics – https://www.moreplatform.eu
• RecoTrace managed by PolyREC, collecting data on both the production and use of recycled plastics – https://recotrace.com/auth/login

MORE – Monitoring Recyclates for Europe is an EU harmonized digital platform to monitor the uptake of recycled polymers into products. It collects data for use of recycled plastics in the form of a survey from converters. RecoTrace collects data for both the recycling and the use of recycled plastics.

In order to provide traceability of the data collected via MORE, EuPC has set up the PolyCert Europe, which facilitates the verification and auditing of the volumes reported into the MORE platform. PolyCert Europe is an umbrella technical platform set up to harmonise existing certification schemes for converters of polymeric materials in Europe. The idea behind the system is to bring together national accredited certification bodies from all over Europe to harmonise the calculation of recycled content in new products. Currently it covers QA-CER, Plastica Seconda Vita, RAL Gütezeichen, DIN CERTCO and AENOR (see Table 1). This approach ensures that converters can be certain of the quality of recyclates they obtain and ensure that the way to calculate recycled content across different national certification schemes is the same. Given the sheer number of certification and labels that are present in Europe, this approach helps the manufacturers of products to navigate their way through the system and to ensure consistent messaging with regard to recycled content.

Conclusions and strategy for the future

In conclusion, there are already a large number of standards, certificates and labels available, both globally and in Europe. It makes sense for floor coverings to fit into one of the existing schemes but based on a clear understanding of the terms and definitions as they apply to floor coverings. This will help to reduce costs for manufacturers and make the communication of the quality and recycled content clearer. Environmental Product Declarations are widely used in the flooring sector. It would make sense to utilise this system to also provide information on the quality and design for recycling specifications of a given product, based on the product standards being developed in this field.