NSF International, Sustainable Minds Partner on Product Transparency Reporting

transparency report program

by | Jun 11, 2014

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transparency report programSustainable Minds has partnered with NSF Sustainability, a division of global public health organization NSF International, to provide life cycle assessment (LCA) verification and report certification for Sustainable Minds Transparency Reports.

Sustainable Minds, a software and services provider founded to operationalize environmental performance into mainstream product development and manufacturing, will introduce the complete SM Transparency Report Program to manufacturers and industry advocates on June 17.

SM Transparency Reports, third party verified by NSF Sustainability and based on ISO 14044 compliant LCAs, are an alternative transparency reporting tool to environmental product declarations (EPDs). NSF Sustainability’s background in certifying environmental reports and sustainable products and services provides additional credibility for the contents of the transparency reports, the company says.

SM Transparency Reports drive purchase decisions by making LCA and environmental performance information easy to understand, the company says. They are strategic marketing and lead generation tools that include fundamentally all the information housed in an EPD, organized into three pages.

Manufacturers can present a product’s functional and environmental performance attributes and make LCA results understandable by describing what they are actually doing to make their products greener, giving the reader visibility into decisions being made across the product’s life cycle. Decision-makers can quickly review and make well-informed greener purchase decisions. Reports are in the cloud, freely available, and connect buyers and sellers in one click. Originally developed for product categories without a product category rule (PCR), SM Transparency reports can be used by manufacturers in any industry to market products.

Efforts in Europe to streamline and standardize PCR development influenced Sustainable Minds to create the SM Transparency Report Framework, a comprehensive LCA-based framework that promotes harmonization and consistency in reporting environmental performance, and introduce product group definitions (PGDs) that enhance consistency in product transparency reporting, the company says. PGDs describe baseline functional and environmental attributes of products in a particular category and inform the LCA development process. This allows manufacturers to demonstrate product advantage and differentiation.

 

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