Jess Bauldry: What is the product circularity datasheet (PCDS)?
Christian Tock: If you have a product that you no longer use and you hold it in your hands, you have very little if no information what to do with it. How can it be recycled? Was it meant to be recycled? Today if the recycler buys or just gets the product free and has to recycle it, he has no idea what to do with it. But if he has a PCDS he knows that these products can be taken apart and decomposed down to virgin materials. I know how much I have; I know the price and so I know what it’s worth.
What have been the challenges of gathering this information in the past?
What people do today to solve this problem very often is they send questionnaires to the manufacturers. Let's say you have a power drill [maker] which gets a questionnaire from an internet platform that is labelling products as being circular or whatever. And then they get all these questions they have to answer. Questions like, is it biodegradable? Is it recyclable? Can it be repaired? Because the product is often already assembled from different sub products they have to go back to their suppliers and ask the same questions. And they have to go back to their suppliers and so on. Basically, you work up the production chain up to the first one which produced the first piece of plastic that ended up in the product. That process doesn't really work very well because very often the information is just not available. So, it's costly for companies to do that and if they want to have that specifically for whatever they have to do, they often don't have the information.
If they go to suppliers, they may have the information but maybe they don't want to disclose it because it's a trade secret.
How does the PCDS overcome these barriers?
What we came up with is a solution that is similar to the Material Safety Data Sheet, a standard used mostly in the chemical industry. If you sell a product to your customer, you don't have to tell them what's in the product, but you have to tell him what the risks are and what kind of countermeasures he has to take. The way the PCDS works is as soon as you produce your product you also produce the data that is linked to that product. Let's say it's a piece of plastic. You immediately produce the standardised data set, answer the questions that are in the PCDS, and you put that data on your server. You pass on that piece of plastic to the next one in line, your customer. So, for instance if you design the product to be biodegradable you give the product and the PCDS that claims this product is biodegradable or this product can be disassembled down to the level of virgin materials that can be used again.
The PCDS today has about 30 pages, different chapters, but you only pick the ones that are relevant for you. And you pass on that information to your customer which is kind of like an instruction, so he knows this product was designed to later on become this or that, or something else.
What if the next manufacturer in the production chain uses non-biodegradable materials or breaks the circularity chain?
If the following one in the supply chain takes that and glues it together with something that's not biodegradable, that's not your fault. You did your best; you took your responsibilities and you design it in a way that you can be biodegradable.
Further along, the big companies that maybe sell them to the final customer can issue the PCDS saying this product is completely designed to be biodegradable and you can rely on it. So once the customer has used the product doesn't need it anymore and wants to get rid of it he can look at the PCDS and see exactly what to do with this product.
How will this data be verified?
To make sure that this works obviously every company will have to have the data behind the PCDS on their servers. If your statement is that your product is biodegradable then an auditor can come and check that based on the data you produced, and actually verify that your statement is correct. And obviously all that should be machine readable so it should come at quite a low cost, and make sure that the basic information on what to do with the product end of life travels through the whole supply chain and is available at the end.
Will the PCDS be compulsory?
We hope that one day it will be [compulsory]. Ideally one day at least in Europe, people will say you have to have a PCDS, even if it's empty, which basically just means that you have no clue what your product will become. But then at least that is clear that you have no idea of what it was designed for.
Until it becomes compulsory, what is the incentive for companies then to use the PCDS?
One of the triggers of launching this was that companies complained they have too many people asking for this information, there's too many questionnaires being sent. We spoke to one company that had to hire a team just for that. If they adhere to the PCDS model, they will have the data set ready when they produce the product.
It will clearly show the ones who are the front runners. And then also, of course, in the end, it's all about material value so if they do that, if they sell the product, they can show that there is a residual value in this product.
Why do this in Luxembourg?
I think the circular economy is really well established in Luxembourg and I think the data-driven economy is something that is a very important philosophy. So, this is kind of a mixture between the two. In the end, it will help the environment enormously. But it's also part of a strategy for economic development because it is about data management, which is something that Luxembourg is pushing right now. And it is also something I think that fits Luxembourg nicely because it is a service that we are developing that will have an impact way beyond our borders, like they do in the finance sector.
At what stage is this project?
We're developing this with companies that are testing it right now giving us feedback. At the same time, we are part of an ISO [International Organization for Standardization] supervision body, a working group, where we are now preparing to develop the PCDS into an ISO standard. We're not there yet, we still have to get the final agreement of ISO to be accepted. The ISO cycle will start next year. It can take up to three years before it becomes a standard.
What if it is not accepted by ISO?
We would still continue this work, because we also see that some companies are so interested that this could just become an industry standard in the sense that if the big players like ArcelorMittal and their supply chains use it, it becomes a standard by default.
Find out more about the PCDS at the next World Circular Economy Forum Online conference circularity in Luxembourg on 8 December at 2:55pm. The conference will be livestreamed.