Verifiable Sustainability Statements
The project's goal is to develop guidelines for how companies can communicate their sustainability claims in such a way that they comply with new requirements from EU directives regarding sustainability statements, providing customers with opportunities to understand the meaning of these statements, make comparisons between such claims, and understand their own opportunities or responsibilities for sustainability based on these statements.
There are several challenges associated with creating verifiable sustainability claims that both demonstrate to the market that products are superior to legal requirements and are accurate according to defined methods. For example, it is often desirable to claim that recycled or renewable materials are more environmentally friendly than virgin and non-renewable materials. However, such a claim is only true if it has not required more natural resources or caused more environmental impact to produce the material considered "eco-friendly." Other examples include asserting that biomaterials are less harmful to health than synthetically produced materials. Even these claims need to be verified to be used in marketing. Large companies often have more capacity to create these foundations and often have greater access to various expertise for this purpose than SMEs do. In this regard, the project aims to provide guidance on when large companies need to be more cautious regarding their claims and to guide SMEs on when they need to seek various types of expertise to ensure the validity of their claims.
The project has a clear value chain perspective, partly because the larger party (Perstorp) supplies to smaller parties in the project (OhlaPlast, Ineos), and also because a company with value chain expertise related to product and material requirements (Polyfuels) is involved. The focus of the project is on the opportunities for different value chain actors' ability and possibilities to communicate verifiable environmental performance to their customers.
The expected effects of the project are that the process industry enhances its understanding of what the requirements will entail for them, and therefore can effectively organize internally within the companies, and that they communicate externally correctly and legally.
Participating parties
Ineos, OhlaPlast, Perstorp, RISE
Time periond
2024-01-01 – 2024-12-31
Total budget
815,000 SEK
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