By Djea Djeapragache
“The European Green Deal is now leading manufacturers, including those in the mechanical engineering sector, to embrace the circular economy. One aspect of this shift concerns the rational use of resources, and a second involves supporting the deployment of specific LCAs by creating environmental data on materials and processes specific to the mechanical engineering industry.
“Since the publication of Directive 2005/32/EC, European manufacturers have been working to improve the energy performance of their products. Following the revision of this directive and the publication of the Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC, the scope was extended to other aspects of products, including the use of raw materials, water, pollution emissions, waste and recyclability.
“All these aspects were then completed, from 2019, by the inclusion of resource efficiency and the publication of the EN 4555x series of horizontal standards.
“In this context, Cetim helps mechanical engineering manufacturers to take into account the various aspects (durability, reuse, improvement, reparability, remanufacturing, calculation of recyclability rates, etc.) covered by these standards, by transposing horizontal European standards into sector-specific product standards. This work also involves developing the calculation of specific indices to quantitatively assess the performance of mechanical products, e.g. a reparability index, a durability index, etc.
“Another aspect of Cetim’s work consists in supporting mechanical engineering manufacturers in their appropriation of existing environmental assessment tools, and in providing them with data enabling them to calculate the environmental impact of their various activities, both for products and for production sites.
“To this end, Cetim has worked on the development of an order-of-magnitude database of environmental impact data for mechanical engineering products and processes. This work has been taken up at European standardisation level in document CEN/TR 18047.
“This work was supplemented by a trade survey to identify missing product and material data. This survey identified over 600 items of data, either non-existent or partially existing. To date, we have launched a vast project covering both the methodological aspects and the creation of environmental data for mechanical engineering.”
Djea Djeapragache is responsible for collaborative projects at the CETIM Research and Programs Department
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