Aiding eco-labelling process and its implementation: environmental impact assessment methodology to define product category rules for canned anchovies

Abstract

To be able to fulfil high market expectations for a number of practical applications, Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) have to meet and comply with specific and strict methodological prerequisites. These expectations include the possibility to add up Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)-based information in the supply chain and to compare different EPDs. To achieve this goal, common and harmonized calculation rules have to be established, the so-called Product Category Rules (PCRs), which set the overall LCA calculation rules to create EPDs. This document provides PCRs for the assessment of the environmental performance of canned anchovies in Cantabria Region based on an Environmental Sustainability Assessment (ESA) method. This method uses two main variables: the natural resources sustainability (NRS) and the environmental burdens sustainability (EBS). To reduce the complexity of ESA and facilitate the decision-making process, all variables are normalized and weighted to obtain two global dimensionless indexes: resource consumption (X1) and environmental burdens (X2). • This paper sets the PCRs adapted to the Cantabrian canned anchovies.• ESA method facilitates the product comparison and the decision-making process.• This paper stablishes all the steps that an EPD should include within the PCRs of Cantabrian canned anchovies.