Standards Development

Scope

The document provides a methodology and format for reporting and exchanging information about the circular economy aspects of products.

The document establishes the principles and procedures for the creation, maintenance and verification of a Product Circularity Data Sheet for efficient exchange of data throughout supply chain networks. It provides adequate guidance on the type, content and format of information to be provided to:

1. Support the design of circular and healthier products

2. Support the implementation of cost-effective circular business models

This document is intended to be used by organizations or group of organizations regardless of their size and location, aiming to manage their own activity and collectively their activities to shift from a linear to a circular economy. Among others it helps organizations or group of organizations to increase the efficiency of the circular use of resources while promoting social and economic benefits.

The document is composed of three main components of the PCDS system:

1. A data template which contains standardized TRUE/FALSE statements to describe the circular properties of a product. When a manufacturer completes a data template, the result is called a Product Circularity Data Sheet (PCDS). Guidance with clear terms and definitions to avoid misunderstanding or overlap between all stakeholders are included in the document.

2. An audit process with third-party verification procedures to validate the quality of the PCDS content. These procedures are defined in order to find the fine balance between data quality assurance and cost affordability.

3. The data exchange protocol and data exchange format to ensure an efficient data exchange throughout the supply chain. 

Purpose

The Product Circularity Data Sheet Standard (PCDS) aims to provide a methodology and format for reporting and exchanging information about the circular economy aspects of products. Providing these data in an efficient and standardized way is considered a key enabler for the circular economy. The standard aims to facilitate rather than replace the many platforms being deployed to measure ‘circularity’ in different regions and sectors.

What are the intentions of the document?

The PCDS intended to be a mechanism that allows users to measure the circularity performance of products. Different platforms measure circularity in different ways for different purposes in different sectors. As a result, the PCDS is not a ranking or scoring mechanism for circularity, but instead structures the information for others to do that.

The intent is not to select one PCDS solution for the market but to set the essential key criteria for any solution of PCDS to avoid misunderstanding or overlap between all stakeholders and to support an effective transition towards circular economy.

The standard aims at facilitating information exchange throughout the supply chain as today there exists a clear lack of standardized system, reporting and data. In order to facilitate the efficient exchange of information in a comparable way and to overcome the general issue that companies do not want to share information considered as proprietary or trade secrets. The use of absolute statements will be employed, using True/False//NA format.

This creates a frame for auditing outputs and to facilitate international recognition and trustworthiness. The conformity assessment is defined in a way to keep costs low and to render it inclusive for SME’s.

What issues the proposed project intent to solve?

Major issues are currently limiting the implementation of circular business models. One of them is the lack of efficient access to accurate data on the circular properties of a product. This includes information on composition or design that would allow the constituent materials to start a second life through reusing, repurposing, repairing, recycling or bio-cycling. This information is often considered by the manufacturer to be proprietary or trade secrets. Withholding such information makes it difficult to make circular business models a reality. The lack of standardized data is also a big issue. For companies willing to provide information on their products, there are multiple schemes for reporting, which creates an expensive overload. As a result, data formats are often irregular and the information itself is incomplete, incorrect, or lost as the product moves along the supply chain. See. Fig. 1

Figure 1: Situation as of today (in the attached document)

A more natural flow would consist in an adaptive approach, where the information would be provided by each stakeholder along the supply chain in a reliable, standardized way. This approach would allow customers to use it in their own datasets and transfer it continuously to other stakeholders in the network.

Figure 2: Situation by using the PCDS (in the attached document)

The PCDS provides a standardized mechanism for the following scenarios described in Fig. 2;

• Suppliers of homogenous base products have a standard format to provide circular data to the next user in the supply chain e.g. manufacturers who make products from those base products.

• Assemblers and manufacturers have a standardized way of reaching back into the supply chain to request circular information from suppliers in order to assemble reliable data about the finished product for customers.

• Manufacturers who alter the circularity characteristics of constituent materials during the manufacturing process have a standardized way to reflect those changes in the product data provided to customers.

Considering the reluctance of manufacturers to deliver some sensitive information on their products, the use of standardized statements is introduced in order to get the essential information on circularity without being intrusive concerning its composition or the manufacturing process.

Considering the reluctance of manufacturers to rely on external databases to store data on their products, the information in the PCDS will be stored at the manufacturer’s premise. This will also create a consistent frame to audit the PCDS to assure trustworthiness. Considering the rising costs of standards compliance for SMEs, the audit framework will be defined in a way to keep costs low.

The market need is real and has been confirmed by more than 50 companies, representing different sectors like building/construction, chemicals, metals/mining, furniture, audit, material testing/certification and many more, which have joined the Circularity Dataset Initiative. This standard will resolve the above mentioned problems and provide a uniform way of providing relevant information to promote circular business models. Relevant information can be aggregated by third party users to provide structured information to end-users or consumers.