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Material declaration
A material declaration is a disclosure of the types of substances that a
product contains, for example, the amount of metals, alloys, plastics or
chemicals. The material declaration may also be a disclosure of hazardous
substances that the product does not contain, such as cadmium, asbestos etc. A
material declaration does not contain an evaluation, like an
EPD,
or conformant statements, like
Type
I Environmental labeling. A material declaration can be a stand alone
document or be part of a
Type
II environmental declaration.
There may be several reasons for putting together a material declaration, for
example company policy and stakeholder perception, laws and regulations in
connection to restricted substances and producer responsibility, customer demand
or competitors' performance. Material declarations can be the first step in
systematically working with environmental issues for a certain product. A
material declaration can be the starting point to make a recycling description
and/or an input to a Type II environmental declaration. The material declaration
could also be used as a starting point for collecting LCI data for an LCA study.
No standard regulates what should be included in a material declaration.
However, there is a guide from the International Electrical Committee (IEC) on
how to ask for information from suppliers. This guide is named IEC 113
"Materials declaration questionnaires – Basic guidelines". Moreover,
some collective efforts to develop guidelines for material declarations of
products have been carried through, mainly in the electric and electronic
industry (GreenPack).
These efforts are driven by the need to comply with
EU
legislations (e.g. RoHS,
WEEE).
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