ISO 14067

ISO 14067 – Carbon Footprint of Products

Requirements and Guidelines for Quantification and Communication

Development of ISO 14067 continues apace. Quantification requirements are maturing, and have

already informed internal guidance documents fort he American retailer Wal-Mart and other companies.

The standard will provide much more specific guidance than the underlying ISO 14044:2006,

Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines. However, the

standard avoids excessively prescriptive language in order to effectively support carbon footprint

measurement for all products and services.

ISO 14067 calls for specific product category rules, including not only the specifications of ISO

14025:2006, Environmental labels and declarations – Type III environmental declarations –

Principles and procedures, but also other sector-specific standards or internationally agreed guidance

documents related to materials and product categories.

The standard also offers a range of communication options, including carbon footprint declarations,

claims, labels, reporting and performance tracking. The requirements on verification and the need for

specific product category rules are partly dependent upon whether the communication is B2B or B2C.

To improve user-friendliness and consistency, working group WG 2, GHG management in the value or

supply chain, of ISO technical committee ISO/TC 207, Environment management, subcommittee SC 7,

Greenhouse gas management and related activities, decided to merge Part 1, Quantification, and Part 2,

Communication. The working group allowed for a second round of balloting to ensure that the standard

would earn broad support in all countries.

Thanks to an initiative from the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS), ISO member for the country, and the

Swedish International Development Authority (Sida), the ISO process has gained significant

engagement from developing countries, in particular from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA

countries) and the East African Community (EAC countries).

Those contributions are helping to develop an International Standard that will be useful around the

world. This strong interest from developing countries is also reflected in the growing engagement of

India and China, which will host another meeting of WG 2 scheduled fort he spring of 2012.

WG 2 decided to align the requirements for addressing direct and indirect land-use changes with the

specifications of the revised PAS 2050. These requirements are informed by research in Europe and the

American state of California, which elaborate details related to sustainability criteria for biofuels.

Other sector-specific category rules are under development fort he electronic industry by the

International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and for building construction under ISO 21930:2007,

Sustainability in building construction – Environmental declaration of building products. These

organisations cooperate through liaison with ISO/TC 207/SC 7/ WG 2.

ISO 14067 is planned to become available as a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) by August

2012, with publication expected for November 2012.

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