UK Environmental Product Information Consortium

Key element of the Government’s market transformation policy is to ensure the availability and accessibility of information on the environmental performance of consumer products and traded goods.

This is because information on environmental performance underpins most major policy measures, including mandatory labelling, minimum standards, voluntary agreements, fiscal measures, green procurement and a number of other initiatives to encourage more reliable consumer information.

UK EPIC, the United Kingdom Environmental Product Information Consortium, is a forum to provide access to reliable public domain product information to a growing number of third parties that work on the development, implementation and assessment of policy measures. The product information captured on the UK EPIC database therefore offers benefits for all those striving to improve the resource efficiency of consumer goods and traded goods in the UK.

This website provides a publicly accessible, searchable information base on the environmental performance of consumer products and traded goods. Users can search for products and sort them by particular criteria. The website also allows users to download complete datasets for further analysis and Partners can submit further data for publication on UK EPIC.

A key element of the Government’s market transformation policy is to ensure the availability and accessibility of information about the environmental performance of consumer products and other traded goods to:

• Enable the development of market transformation strategies;
• Enable informed choice and procurement decisions by consumers and throughout the supply chain;
• Stimulate and enable competition;
• Identify performance Standard Specifications for products and traded goods.

Whilst all these information applications might require different user interfaces, they all require access to the same set or subset of basic technical product information. UK EPIC acts as a primary information base and makes product information freely available in machine-readable formats. This approach has benefits to everybody involved in improving the resource efficiency of products and traded goods in the UK:

• Intermediaries gain access to information to help set up energy efficiency initiatives and incentive schemes, and to distribute information to retailers (such as Carbon Trust, Consumer Association, Energy Saving Trust, etc).
• Product suppliers and trade associations are under pressure to make their product information available to a growing number of third party applications. Submitting information to a single primary information base will reduce demands and costs on individual suppliers and trade associations. It also allows suppliers to get ahead of their competitors and differentiate their products on efficiency and/or performance.
• Major buyers of products (such as hospitals, schools, etc.) gain access to product information to help inform their green procurement policies. Retailers can select products to stock with the help of UK EPIC and in accordance with their own procurement policies.
• Government department and agencies as well as researchers can base their policy scenarios and decisions on solid information about the environmental performance of products and goods, rather than generic market assessments.

At present, for domestic appliances at least, manufacturers tend to use different model codes depending on where the product is to be marketed. Therefore, a separate product database is needed in each market area or country. Although this means that there is little immediate prospect of complete transparency for consumer information and of a simple EU-wide product information base, there is scope to progressively increase linkages and to share information with other similar product information databases.

In February 2003 the Government unveiled its Energy White Paper: Our energy future – creating a low carbon economy. The paper seeks to introduce step changes to the way in which the UK produces and consumes energy. It outlines a clear strategy to reduce harmful emissions over the next 50 years with energy efficiency at the heart of this.

The White Paper aims to deliver savings through higher product standards, ensuring that products and appliances are as efficient as possible. To achieve this, it states we need to remove the least efficient products from the market, encourage competition to bring forward improved products, and make it easier for people and businesses to choose the best. Ways to do so include minimum standards, voluntary agreements with industry, fiscal measures, procurement policy, and better information on product performance.

All these policy measures require access to reliable public domain product information by a growing number of third parties and UK EPIC offers a forum to make this product information available.

UK EPIC provides practical advice for private individuals and professional buyers who may have no special environmental knowledge or expertise with purchasing products but wish to ensure the products they buy are good value, do not waste resources and are less harmful to the environment.

Buying “green” can be a complex business. Detailed environmental specifications are rarely available for a product and, where they are, often need considerable technical expertise and environmental knowledge to correctly interpret.

The Market Transformation Programme (MTP) through UKEPIC, provides indicative performance standards for a range of products to help buyers and specifiers make informed procurement decisions. Policy makers are also informed.

ECO PERFORMANCE

The problem of how to buy “green” has been solved for those products that already have an Eco-label. The EU’s eco-label sets the “gold” standard but there are currently very few such labelled products available in the UK market and it might be difficult to run a competitive tendering exercise, for example. Unfortunately, there are no convenient “silver” or “bronze” composite environmental specifications.

MTP has produced a guide on energy and eco criteria entitled Green Procurement – Made Easier” via MTP which has been compiled to overcome that problem. We have identified the current most important energy and environmental aspects for buyers to check, suggest some “quick” specifications to aim for and, where available, provide links to searchable databases to help you find suitable products.