Marketing tools for products

There are different alternatives to choose between when presenting environmental performance of a product. You should define what kind of information you want to communicate to your customers and stakeholders and to let that be influencing your choice. 

In many cases a material declaration is just enough and there is no need for any more information, especially if it is a product with no energy use and where no special maintenance is required. 

Recycling instructions are often required by the customers when the product is of the character that it could be rather difficult to dismantle. The customers also want to know the material content and especially if there are any hazardous substances. Of special interest is also to declare and also mark on the product different types of polymers.

Environmental declarations type II are used to provide a more comprehensive declaration compared to material declaration and to increase your environmental image in order to give a competitive advantage. By using environmental product declarations type III (based on life cycle assessment, LCA) you will give your company a strong environmental profile, i.e. you really show that you are aware of environmental matters and that you have the knowledge and experience of working with these. An EPD, that is a certified environmental product declaration, gives thoroughly information about the environmental performance of a product. It is however time- and resource consuming and there is a need of environmental competence in your organization. For more experience of EPD see "Use of EPD in marketing". Sometimes it is enough with an environmental product declaration that is not certified but at the same format as an EPD. The difference is that it is not reviewed by a third party and the cost for developing it is less compared to an EPD.

In order to successively increase the environmental competence it is advisable to start with simple material declarations and in a stepwise manner carry out more comprehensive declarations based on the former ones. It should be easy and flexible to carry out marketing information and preferably no special education or competence should be needed. For EPDs and other environmental product declarations type III, environmental support may be needed from specialist.

Business value 
The business value of this strategy is that one can, based on common questions from customers, decide what type of marketing material that is relevant to develop for a product. It is a bad return on investments to produce marketing materials that answer questions that no customer is asking.