ECOS | Environmental Coalition on Standards

03 November 2016

Work on Material Efficiency standards for Ecodesign finally kicks-off

After three years of debate and two standardisation request attempts, CEN and CENELEC are kicking-off the work to develop European horizontal standards related to material efficiency aspects for Ecodesign products. ECOS participated in the first meeting of the newly-created CEN-CENELEC Joint Working Group (JWG10), which took place in Brussels on 28 September.

As part of the Circular Economy Package Action Plan, the European Commission has requested a set of horizontal/generic methodologies that would address material efficiency aspects for Ecodesign (energy-related products) from the European Standardisation Organisations. These methods could later be considered in regulatory committees with a view to set material efficiency requirements in Ecodesign regulations.

The future standards should cover the areas of:

  • Assessing durability, upgradability and ability to repair, re-use and re-manufacture of products;
  • Ability to access or remove certain components, consumables or assemblies from products to facilitate repair or remanufacture or reuse or their extraction at the end-of-life for ease of treatment and recycling;
  • Reusability/recyclability/recoverability (RRR) indexes or criteria, preferably taking into account the likely evolution of recycling methods and techniques over time;
  • Assessing the proportion of re-used components and/or recycled materials in products;
  • Use and recyclability of Critical Raw Materials to the EU, listed by the European Commission;
  • Documentation/marking on material efficiency information related to the product.

Despite the significant delay, ECOS welcomes the start of the work and looks forward to the smooth and timely development of the long-anticipated set of standards which should be ready by March 2019. ECOS will continue to play an active and central role throughout the process.

The standardisation request, M/543 can be found here.

ECOS is co-funded by the European Commission and EFTA Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EISMEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Website by