The Danish Environment Ministry has published “Ecodesign Directive 2.0: From Energy Efficiency to Resource Efficiency“, a study of how resource efficiency requirements could be further integrated into implementing measures and voluntary agreements under the Ecodesign Directive.

The study proposes a list of 14 possible requirements including easy disassembly (entailing a restriction on the use of glued and moulded parts); declaration of recycled content (which is controversial because recycled content is not necessarily recyclable itself); reducing the number of composite materials (also controversial if such composites offer enhanced performance); and, of course, more information for consumers!

AMDEA attended a workshop on “Expected, Actual and Optimal Product Lifetimes” hosted at the Nottingham Conference Centre and funded by the DAIWA Anglo-Japanese Foundation and The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. The presenters were mostly from universities in UK and Japan but nevertheless it provided an opportunity to provide comments from a manufacturer’s perspective. Also in attendance were representatives from Defra and WRAP.

Elsewhere the Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards (VAMAS) is currently working with ISO, IEC and BIPM (International Bureau of Weights and Measures) to develop a joint initiative on “metrology applied to material property measurements”. VAMAS was established by the G7 group of nations and representatives from the European Commission to promote world trade via innovation and adoption of “advanced materials”.