Unfortunately, it is unclear whether all these existing labels and certificates are equally robust and effective. It is time to investigate how to guarantee the quality of these instruments and to move towards harmonising sustainability requirements.
It is time to investigate how to guarantee the quality of these instruments and work towards harmonising sustainability requirements. That is what the Horizon Europe project SUSTCERT4BIOBASED will be tackling over the next three years. Partners of the consortium are Wageningen Research Foundation (Netherlands, coordinator), Fundación Circe Centro de Investigacion de Recursos y Consumos Energeticos (CIRCE, Spain), White Research SRL (Belgium), Environmental Coalition on Standards (ECOS, Belgium) and Control Union Certifications Germany GmbH (CU, Germany).
Monitoring
SUSTCERT4BIOBASED will monitor existing certification schemes and labels to assess their strengths and weaknesses and promote the adoption of best practices. This will be done through:
- a catalogue of sustainability certification schemes and labels relevant to biobased value chains;
- a monitoring system tool for systematic evaluation of effectiveness, robustness and completeness of sustainability certification schemes and labels;
- a database of global trade flows of biobased value chains – data and figures on volumes of biological resources and biobased materials and products, distinguishing between certified and non-certified;
- a cost-benefit analysis methodology and data collection model – feasibility of introducing schemes and labels;
- thematic briefings for governments and policy makers, the sustainability schemes community, actors in the industrial biobased value chain and regional bioeconomy stakeholders;
- a stakeholder network – where stakeholders can receive project updates, interact and share their knowledge and views.
Ultimately, the project consortium will make recommendations to policymakers, sustainability system producers, players in the industrial biobased value chain and stakeholders in the regional bioeconomy.
Parties wishing to participate in the network around this project can register online at the SUSTCERT4BIOBASED website.
Image: Shoaib_Mughal/Shutterstock
