After a solid background as development supervisor in ecotechnologies and as an account manager in the information system, Sylvie Bronchain holds the position of PEP ecopassport’s® chief delegate since September. Let’s have a closer look at this strategic position with ambitious development prospects for the programme.
- You have newly joined PEP ecopassport®. Could you remind us what is the goal of the programme?
The PEP ecopassport® aims to define and to gather the procedures allowing the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) of electrical, electronic appliances and climate engineering, and to provide them to future industrialists or professional unions willing to lead their members into this environmental declaration process. Hence, the association determines among other things the rules of elaboration, verification and the publication of the product environmental profile (PEP) and make them accessible for all of those who are interested: industrialists, users, institutions and even professional associations.
- What is the added value for a company to join this process?
Whether it is for a company or a union, it provides an honest and open visibility concerning their commitment to sustainable development. It provides a true and fair view of the environmental footprint of the devices before it even becomes compulsory as part of the French and international standards or regulation. In France for instance, the regulation RE 2020, which concerns new constructions, is being prepared by the E+C- Experimentation. Furthermore, if a company, as of today, registers its products’ environmental declaration in our database, this company is granted to be an approved supplier by project owners or their clients. They can, in that case, be acknowledged in a labelling approach, such as the HQE in France, BREEAM in England, or even LEED in the US. In promoting the PEP process, manufacturers acquire business opportunities throughout the world. Moreover, the programme involves all organizations, no matter what their size is: it can be a small business or an SMB. The added value of a PEP lies in providing trustable and objective environmental information resulting from a life cycle assessment of the electrical, electronic appliances and climatic engineering. This information attests to the company’s commitment regarding the environmental liability. Reaching that information through a formatted database which is accessible everywhere in the world is the aim of the PEP programme. The E+C- Experimentation will be effective by 2020: it is now time to take action!
- As Chief Delegate, what are your observations and evolution prospect for the association?
Concerning the association and its different steps, we have now managed to secure a sufficient main core of major actors of which we need to extend the development. Tomorrow my role will be double. To start with, we need to strengthen this core. Especially by acquiring new “heavyweight” companies representative of the electrical and electronic appliances area. Promoting the programme and the advantages it offers to those enterprises will be essential. Secondly, my role will be to pursue the influential work concerning all the international actors who combine their environmental database. PEP ecopassport® must be part of those databases and must be made accessible. This influential work applies to other programmes such as IBU, BRE or EPD System in Europe, UL in America and China, and to all other concerned institutions (normalisation, labelling, …). What is at stakes for this second developing phase of the PEP ecopassport® is to become a global standard in terms of environmental declarations in the field of electric and electronic appliances and climatic engineering.