Sustainability certification for biobased systems to support the establishment of a circular and sustainable biobased industry

The challenge

The circular biobased systems will play a key role in the green transition since they will contribute to the objectives of the European Green Deal and particularly its Zero Pollution Action Plan and the 2030 Climate Target Plan. To this aim during the last decade the EU heavily invested in a transition from a linear fossil-based economy towards a circular biobased economy As a result, this ambition accelerated the development of new biobased products and the creation of numerous biobased value chains.

Biobased products are wholly or partially derived from biological resources, but still, it is important to ensure their sustainability considering the range of environmental impacts, as well as socio-economic impacts.

To this end, a plethora of sustainability certification schemes and business-to-business ecolabels have been developed to allow traceability and transparency of sustainability impacts along the value chains and trades.

In order to ensure the transition to circular biobased systems occurs sustainably, it is important that effective and robust schemes and labels get implemented and further adopted. Moreover, the recognition of the benefits of sustainability certification schemes and labels is needed for their wider adoption by the European industries. This is where SUSTCERT4BIOBASED comes into play!

Mission

SUSTCERT4BIOBASED project is set on fostering the adoption of effective and robust sustainability certification schemes and business-to-business ecolabels for industrial biobased systems to support tracing the sustainability of biobased products along the value chains and trades within the EU and globally for responsible production and consumption.

Objectives

1. Το review and analyze the existing international and EU sustainability certification schemes and business-to-business ecolabels for biological resources and for biobased materials and products with a life-cycle perspective along four themes (environment, social, economic, and governance) considering the complexity and relationships of all dimensions of sustainability and the rules and procedures on how the schemes are managed
2. To create a database of the global trade flows for biological resources and for biobased materials and products also providing information on the extent of their certification
3. To develop a monitoring framework for the systematic evaluation of the effectiveness and robustness of the existing sustainability schemes and labels
4. To use the developed monitoring framework to assess the existing schemes and identify the “best-in-class” among them
5. To assess the costs and benefits from the adoption of sustainability schemes and ecolabels in selected industrial biobased value chains considering actual economic as well as internalized environmental and social ones
6. To identify best practices and offer recommendations for the adoption of effective and robust sustainability schemes and ecolabels
7. To engage a variety of relevant stakeholders especially international organizations, industrial parties, scheme owners, certifications bodies and policy makers

Expected outcome

The results of the project will be leveraged to provide recommendations to 4 key target groups: policymakers, sustainability system community, industrial biobased value chain actors, and regional bioeconomy stakeholders. Our vision is that this will result in harmonized system requirements, continuous improvement, and enhanced adoption of sustainability certification schemes and ecolabels and provide a significant contribution towards establishing a circular and sustainable bio-based industry for Europe contributing to the Bioeconomy Strategy and the Green Deal. The large multi-sectorial stakeholder involvement (through an international Network of Interest and a comprehensive Advisory Board) will enable SUSTCERT4BIOBASED to increase outreach and align with ongoing international efforts.