The French start-up YuKan is launching the first digital platform that rates the environmental footprint of products, in line with the new “Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) Guide”, a method that the European Commission will present during its “EU Environmental Footprint Final Conference” from 23 to 25 April, which will announce the success of its experimentation phase.
Christophe Girardier, president and co-founder of YuKan, says:
“YuKan is the first and only digital technology to model this method to make it accessible to both consumers, manufacturers, brand owners and the supply chain. Our ambition is to equip brands to promote to consumers the real and objective environmental footprint of their products, to make this performance a new selection criterion and therefore a commercial challenge. Through this disruptive approach, YuKan empowers consumers to choose products with low environmental impact. This is where the ecological transition begins.”
Jon Woodhead, Director of Challenge Sustainability, YuKan’s first strategic partner adds:
“Companies should integrate this new approach into the definition of their current and future sustainable development objectives and strategies. This new approach will enable companies to provide consistent and credible information to internal and external stakeholders.”
The “PEF guide” is a new multi-criteria method adopted by the European Union to objectively define and measure the environmental footprint of products. Developed by the European Commission, validated and established as a European reference but applicable worldwide, it marks a real revolution in the environmental sector. It affirms a radically new and global vision of the environmental footprint, taking into account 13 impact factors (from the depletion of natural resources to climate change, up to water consumption, eutrophication or human health), and supercedes all current approaches limited to the carbon footprint alone (one of these 13 impact factors). This new method will put an end to the unfounded environmental claims or labels, and gives to manufacturers and brand owners the opportunity to know and objectively value the environmental footprint of their products.
In addition, the Commission has also defined an overall indicator for measuring the environmental footprint by weighting these 13 criteria, making it possible to give a score and an overall mark making it possible to know objectively the performance of any product.
Analysis of this overall score during the experimental phase, conducted with over 200 industrial organisations, showed that the carbon footprint often represents only about 1/3 of the overall environmental impact of many products. For example, the carbon footprint of pasta represents only 18% of the environmental impact of this common food product, 28% for beer, 28% for wine, 38% for paints or 38% for insulation materials.
Through a technology using the latest advances in big data, YuKan implements this new method through new online applications, allowing manufacturers to rate their products, but above all to identify performance optimisation levers and even simulate eco-design strategies.
YuKan is a true independent digital rating agency for the environmental performance of products. The YuKan platform makes a new era possible where, through the collective power of responsible consumer choice, the most economically efficient companies will also be the most efficient in terms of environmental footprint. In this YuKan brings one of the major levers of ecological transition.