The EU Commission, which plans to demand the carbon footprint of every product it will import from the beginning of next year and will also implement a carbon tax at the border, continues to prepare the data infrastructure it needs in this sense. The methodology for calculating the environmental footprint of products and organisations, which started to be developed in many sectors in 2013, is currently expanding in its second phase with more sectors in order to prevent false green declarations. The data sets required for environmental performance assessments will be prepared by the expertise of Metsims Sustainability Consulting in the "textile", "apparel" and "footwear" sectors, which are closely related to Turkey, in addition to many basic sectors such as chemistry, food and metal industry.
Metsims Sustainability Consulting won the tender for the development of the database required for “product environmental performance” calculations in the tender opened by the EU Commission as part of the consortium of “ecoinvent Association”, “PRé Sustainability” and “Blonk Consultants”, the world’s leading organisations in the development of LCA databases, and undertook the collection and development of inventories of all globally valid production processes of the textile, apparel and footwear sectors. In other words, when the work is completed, the environmental performance calculation requests to be requested by the EU Commission from the global textile, apparel and footwear sectors will be made thanks to this data developed by Metsims Sustainability Consulting.
Metsims Sustainability Consulting, one of Europe’s leading LCA consulting firms, known for its Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) studies especially in building materials and the databases it has developed globally (www.lcadatabase.com), has had the opportunity to apply this experience in different sectors, especially with the harmonisation of EPD and PEF methods in building materials. Metsims Sustainability Consulting, the leading company in LCA in Turkey, has been carrying out the Turkey Life Cycle Assessment Database project with its own resources for about 5 years. The TLCID database, which is a tremendous resource for carbon regulation at the border with the Green Deal, contains many environmental impact data, including carbon footprint values for thousands of products, and sample products are shared for the information of the sectors through the www.tlcid.org website.
Dr Hüdai KARA, founder of Metsims Sustainability Consulting, who is also a member of the Technical Advisory Board (TAB) in the development of the EU PEF method, said:Turkey, which makes most of its exports to the EU, needs to be ready for the risks and opportunities that will come with sustainability. In this sense, as a Turkish company, we are proud that the data needs for the Textile, Apparel and Footwear sectors are met by us, and it will enable our country to reduce or even avoid the financial burdens that will arise from regulations such as carbon tax, especially at the border. In many sectors such as the textile sector, it gives the fruits of our nearly 20 years of international experience in the field of sustainability” .
In addition, Dr. KARA stated that sustainability and climate change studies will continue in the international arena, that as Metsims Sustainability Consulting, they are now competing with leading world organisations in these fields, exporting services and that new projects that will make a serious contribution to the economy of our country, especially in textile, will be signed in the near future.
The project, which will last approximately 6 months, will be carried out by Ali Rüzgar, one of the consultants of Metsims Sustainability Consulting, Turkey’s most competent textile sector LCA expert, Textile Engineer and at the same time continuing his PhD studies on sustainable textiles.
Since 2013, the EU Commission has been developing calculation methodologies focused on Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF) for the “Building single market for green products” (COM(2013)). The “EU Green Deal” and “2020 EU green claims initiative” green products and labelling policies of the EU and member states are expected to be based on this methodology, which is based on Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) and Assessment (LCA). LCA-based approaches are also included in many laws that are closely related to Turkey and have been developed only in the last two years:
- Single use plastics (LCT, LCA)
- Sustainable investments (LCT, LCA, PEF)
- Circular Economy Action plan (LCT, LCA, PEF)
- Biodiversity strategy (LCT, LCA, PEF)
- Farm to fork strategy (LCT, LCA, PEF)
With LCA and PEF methods, it is aimed to prevent green-oriented misinformation in the market with sustainability-oriented, scientific-based, measurable, reliable evaluations. As Metsims Sustainability Consulting, we will continue to support Turkey’s sustainable development with our competence in LCA and PEF, which will have an important place in issues such as EU Taxonomy and Sustainable Finance, which are still developing in Turkey.
