CONTENTS
December 2006

Consulting Activities
Product Sustainability
Corporate Sustainability
International Scene
Calendar and Outlook
Newsletter as PDF-Download
 

Dear Reader,

Some things change:
With this issue we introduce some exciting new developments.

Our new Corporate Design: the globe and key visuals (three motives) symbolise the beauty and vulnerability of our natural environment and our mission to foster its sustainable use.

PE International and the new PE logo: This will be the central brand used by our organisation worldwide and consequently the mother company, PE Europe, will be renamed PE International.
 

Experts in Sustainability: Superior expertise - the grounds for our success so far - is our new claim and is the foundation of our future development.

Our product family covers all bases: the GaBi software takes care of your product sustainability while the SoFi software attends to your corporate sustainability.

But others stay the same:
Our gratitude towards our clients for a successful year and our enthusiasm and commitment to leadership in expertise, quality, reliability and customer satisfaction.

In this issue:
We focus on sustainable construction and EPDs, as well as on the new GRI sustainability reporting standard and its implementation into business practise.

We all wish you an efficient and fruitful 2007.
Yours,

Michael Betz
Managing Director of PE International

Cover story:
 

PE Americas: Commitment to advancing LCA in North America

Sustainability and Life Cycle Leaders join forces. The Five Winds International and PE partnership helps North American firms increase revenue and environmental integrity by applying life cycle concepts and tools. Jim Fava, Managing Director of both Five Winds International and PE Americas discusses the demand for life cycle approaches in the North American market and how PE Americas  ...more
 

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Environmental Product Declarations are a recognised and robust basis for the assessment of buildings

As part of a study for the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA), PE examined how EPDs will contribute to the German sustainable construction strategy. The report "EPDs for construction products - a branch specific realisation of a type III scheme" is a roadmap for setting up a consistent EPD system regarding  ...more

Material efficiency is increasing - a boost for SMEs

According to the German Material Efficiency Agency, demea (www.materialeffizienz.de), material costs are one of the largest cost pools in the manufacturing industry. The Federal Ministry of Economics has therefore launched the support programme "VerMat" to increase material efficiency in SMEs. First analyses of material efficiency carried out by accredited demea consultants are 67 % subsidised by "VerMat". PE's representative in the pool of consultants is Jürgen Stichling.
 

Is Australia Sustainable?

The arrival of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" has once again highlighted environmental issues in Australia. As one of the few developed countries not bound by the Kyoto Protocol, there is a hot debate on whether Australia is really serious about sustainability.  ...more

Making Stuttgart's public transport sustainable

The Stuttgarter Strassenbahn AG is committed to providing sustainable public transport in Stuttgart. PE Europe was called upon to help determine which bus technology and fuel should be used in the bus fleet up to 2020. ...more

...NEWS.......
..: A seminar on LCA, DfE and GaBi software family was held on November 28 in conjunction with the ICGSI 2006 in Chiang Mai to build capacities in product sustainability. During the conference a programmatic speech was given by PE about: beyond LCA - Life Cycle Sustainability?
..: Stainless Steel LCI project was launched on November 17 in Brussels by the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries, EUROFER. This project will provide high quality, representative Life Cycle Inventories for the production of various grades of stainless steel products in Europe. It also addresses the needs of the European Life Cycle Data System. PE has been awarded the contract for this project, with IVL as the critical reviewer. In the future, other stainless steel LCIs can be integrated into the database to develop global data.
 

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GARDENA: Reduced costs and environmental loads thanks to material and energy flow analyses

GARDENA Manufacturing GmbH went through their manufacturing processes with a fine-toothed comb as part of the LUBW program, BEST (www.lubw.baden-wuerttemberg.de/servlet/is/5760/). Using the manufacture of a spindle for the GARDENA hand cylinder lawnmower as an example, they were able to identify and quantify optimisation potentials based on an energy and material flow analysis. ...more

LCA Interaction in Malaysia

A workshop on "Life Cycle Assessment and the Potential of Using the Results in the Future" was held on the 6th of September 2006 at ENSEARCH in Kota Damansara. ENSEARCH is a non-profit association of organisations, professionals, students and people with an interest in learning and promoting effective ways of managing the impacts of human activities on the environment. ...more
 

Client Statement

"Life Cycle Simulation consults companies in the coating industry and other sectors on the cost and environmental consequences of process design and material choices. The straightforward engineering approach and the powerful modelling capacities of GaBi enable us to efficiently fulfil these tasks. Since GaBi is an essential tool for our work, we expect first class service - and always get it. We are now keen to work with the database upgrade."

Matthias Harsch, PhD.,
Managing Director of
Life Cycle Simulation GmbH

Client Statement

After a very successful year using GaBi in a number of research projects, the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) has also switched to GaBi for its postgraduate educational programmes and professional development training.
"We immediately benefited from GaBi's clear, transparent and powerful concept. We particularly like the unparalleled flexibility in modelling and - thanks to the i-report feature - the ease for communicating results, scenarios or even build individual ecodesign applets. In our educational programmes, GaBi provides the students with a clear picture of LCA modelling due to its engineering approach."
 

...NEWS.......
..: Subscribe now for the update of Ecoinvent database (plain). On behalf of the ecoinvent centre, PE is offering early bird specials (30 % discount) on the update of the ecoinvent LCI database, which will be released in the summer of 2007. Existing clients can order the new version, ecoinvent v2.0 plain, until the end of May 2007 for a reduced price of 1000 €. New clients can either order ecoinvent v2.0 plain for 1200 € or order the combined package (ecoinvent plain v1.3 and v2.0) for 1800 €, if they want to start right away.
..: GaBi lite demo version available from December 2006. Contact us to get your complete free demo version.
 

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The G3 reporting standard: Initiation of a new era in sustainability reporting

Amsterdam vibrated with sustainability experts this October, when GRI launched its new G3 sustainability reporting standard. The conference program featured the most renowned speakers of the "sustainability universe", and almost 1000 participants from all over the world enjoyed a very unique event.  ...more

BBVA introduces sustainability software solution

The Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) is the second largest Spanish financial institution. It is included in the two most important international sustainability stock-market indices, FTSE4Good and Dow Jones Sustainability. The BBVA has also signed international agreements and conventions like the UN Global Compact or the UNEP FI Statement by  ...more
 

SoFi works with energy

The Spanish electricity company IBERDROLA, one of the strongest in Europe with more than 18 million electricity customers and worldwide leadership in the wind energy sector, has become an international reference in the renewable energies sector  ...more

Sustainability benchmarks for the finance industry

Being a great success in the logistics and transport sector, the benchmarking of sustainability indicators is now also offered for financial service companies. The 'Benchmarking Platform Finance' is accessible via the internet and provides individual evaluation of one's own performance against a peer group - thanks to the support of UNEP FI and VfU who delivered the content frame used in the platform. The concept and service was introduced at the UNEP FI / VfU roundtable (22nd and 23rd Nov in Berlin). More information is available from Alexandra Saraev.
 

...NEWS.......
..: The annual conference of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN) was an inspiring event. In the venue (Vienna, September 2006), more than 300 participants from business and science participated in plenary sessions and lively workshops. In addition to new ideas and new contacts, the participants took home that there is structural progress in business ethics implementation, one example being the many upcoming CSR study courses. Full coverage of the conference (in German language) is provided by the Austrian magazine "The Glocalist". Free copies can be ordered at PE CEE.
..: The annual update of the sustainability software solution SoFi was distributed to all customers in October 2006. As part of the standard software support and based on priorities of the SoFi users, PE Europe maintains SoFi actively to always meet the changing requirements of sustainability.
 

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The network works

In October 2006, the Brazilian government launched the 1st Brazilian LCI Project - IVC Brazil. PE International and LBP-GaBi (University of Stuttgart) are members of this project, providing expertise and support regarding the development of the inventory datasets.  ...more

SoFi arrives in Moscow! Partnership with InterEcoExpertise

With the signing of the "InterEcoExpertise Ltd" sales contract in September, PE's international sales network now stretches to Russia, where our new partner will market the sustainability software SoFi. According to Sergey Vostroknutov, development director of the Non-Governmental Ecological Vernadsky Foundation, Russian companies  ...more

Norway takes a closer look

by Prof. Annik Magerholm Fet (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

The goal of the project "Databases and product declarations for furniture" was to provide SMEs in Norway a tool that helps to gather environmental information and to document this according to the requirements of ISO 14025. They aspired to have an LCA database for the typical materials that were used for furniture. The database was partly founded on data from the GaBi databases, and partly on business-specific information. Environmental impacts were calculated using the CML2001 method that is provided with GaBi. As a result of the project, approximately 50 EPDs for Norwegian furniture were developed.
Full article: www.pe-international.com/downloads0.html
 

SENSE - Sustainability Evaluation of Solar Energy Systems: the results are in!

The SENSE project, co-funded under the 5th Framework Programme of the EU, was successfully completed in the summer of 2006. As the "1st General Assembly of the European Photovoltaic Platform" in the European Parliament showed, the project attracted attention from scientists, politicians  ...more

Best case study award at the InLCA/LCM goes to PE International

Over 100 LCA experts from business, academia and government from all around the world came together in October for the InLCA/LCM conference in Washington to present interesting papers on methods and applications. PE's presentation "Alternative fuels - a major step towards a sustainable road transportation of tomorrow? Challenges and potentials from a life cycle perspective" was awarded best case study (www.lcacenter.org/InLCA2006/energy1.html).
 

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The 3rd International Conference on Life Cycle Management will take place in Zurich, from August 27 to 29, 2007. Life cycle management is an important framework with a powerful toolbox for the promotion of more sustainable goods, services, and processes.  ...more

The second International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment - CILCA 2007 is to be held in the city of São Paulo from February 26th to 28th, 2007.

In this framework, CILCA 2007 (www.abcvbrasil.org.br/cilca2007/index.php) continues to consolidate Life Cycle Thinking and Life Cycle Management in Latin America and increase the collaboration of this region with others that have studied this theme in greater detail.  ...more
 

SETAC Europe 17th Annual Meeting
Date: 20-24 May 2007
Location: Porto, Portugal.

The meeting will focus on "The multiple stressors for the environment - present and future challenges and perspectives". Amongst others, LCA is one of the main themes that will be addressed at the conference.  ...more
 

» Fairs » Events » Dates 2007

In the table below you will find up to date information, when and where we and the employees of our cooperation partners are present on exhibitions, conferences, etc. Make use of the possibility to meet us there and arrange an appointment.  ...more
 

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