Ludo Debever, Peter Sejersen, Carolin Spirinckx
Papers # 2018 Las-Vegas
Until today there are various ways of demonstrating the Environmental Performance of products, such as Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), Life Cycle Impact Assessments (LCIA), Environmental Performance Declarations (EPDs). The methods to obtain the result, however, can vary from country to country and can be interpreted differently and are difficult to interpret by the product user. There are also various environmental claims, such as ecolabels, which cannot be verified and can confuse the end consumer. The European Commission therefore decided to develop a method that can be used on any product or on any organisation and that will allow the end consumer to make a choice when taking environmental aspects into account. This method is called the Product Environmental Footprint. A 3-year pilot phase was finalised in April 2018 and the method is now going through a transition phase before a final decision will be taken how to implement the method in existing legislation.
The European Commission decided in 2013 to launch a new initiative on how to assess the environmental footprint of products (PEF) and organizations (OEF). Unlike the existing ISO1 and EN Standards2 the intention of the DG Environment & JRC was to develop a method which can be used for all kind of products and organizations.
A three-year pilot phase started in 2013 and has just ended. Now the PEF/OEF transition phase will start. During the transition phase the experiences and knowledge gained during the pilots will be used for a broader roll out and for further finetuning of the approved Product Category Rules (PEFCRs) developed within the pilot phase.
The PEF method is seen as a game changer. First, for each product group an environmental benchmark, also called “the European Representative Product” has been defined for each environmental category to which the environmental performance is measured against. Secondly the European Commission is aiming for a communication on the environmental performance of products, not only for B2B business but also for B2C communication. This aim is very ambitious and will require a complete new set of communication vehicles which are still under discussion and development. Currently the European Commission is in the process of exploring different possible usage of the PEF method. Options which are currently under discussion are among others: a mandatory method, a voluntary method, but mandatory for communication, a method to support eco-labelling and/or an instrument for Green Public Procurement.
TEPPFA has many years of experience in LCA studies assessing the environmental environmental performance of many plastic piping systems. During the last 6 years more than 20 EPDs according to EN158043 have been issued. In parallel also several comparative LCAs in which the environmental performance of plastic piping systems are compared with traditional competing piping systems like concrete, copper and ductile iron have been issued. Based on this extensive experience, TEPPFA was selected by the European Commission to lead the PEF pilot project dealing with hot and cold-water supply piping systems.
Although the PEF method is based on LCA it is in many ways different compared to the EN standard EN 15804 dealing with construction products: the number of impact categories to report are higher, calculation methods are different and finally the data quality requirements are much higher. “EF compliant datasets” are being provided by the European Commission to secure that all secondary datasets are coming from the same source. To understand how the introduction of the PEF method impacts the environmental performance of the plastic pipe systems and how it alters the comparisons to traditional materials, TEPPFA has set up several internal “shadow projects” in parallel with the PEF pilot project. The aim of those projects is to better understand the impact of PEF on other pipe applications compared to alternative materials.
Related papers
Author(s) : A. Marangoni
The quality of infrastructures is a key driver for maximizing the performance of the utilities networks and minimizing the environmental impacts associated with their operation. The water and sewer pipes are key network elements to guarantee a satisfactory service to the citizens. Their end-of-life management is an...
Author(s) : Li, Yanjun, Xiang, Aimin, Xu, HaiyunBeijing, Xie, Jianling, Ho, Kinman, Xu, HaiyunBeijing
It is necessary to evaluate the impact resistance of plastics pipes as they have the potential to be damaged by hitting or colliding during storage, transportation and installation. As a well-established test method, the Charpy impact strength of unnotched test pieces cut from thermoplastics pipes is determined...
Author(s) : Drew Mueller, Peter Dyke
HDPE Pipe holds a dominant position in several markets in North America: natural gas distribution, oil patch, mining, landfill and geothermal. So why are polyethylene’s municipal water and wastewater market shares so much lower than these other industries? How has the polyethylene industry been successful in growing...
Author(s) : Donald Swen, Leanne Pichay, Nicholas Vallin, Alice Wu, Jim Johnston
In the rural commune of Ait Bayoud, Morocco, two of the most remote villages in the area, Ilguiloda and Izgouaren, live with water scarcity. To meet their water needs, women and children walk several kilometers to the nearest spring each day, often multiple times a day. Consequently, children cannot attend school...
Author(s) : Andreas Moerman, Flip van der Valk, Mirjam Blokker KWR, Tjakko Haaijer, Jan Vreeburg,
Drinking water companies with ageing networks are facing vast amounts of drinking water network reconstructions during the coming decades. This development coincides with the energy transition, which puts pressure on the available space underground. These external drivers give drinking water companies an opportunity...
Author(s) : Anders Andtbacka, Peter Sejersen
In the late nineties a study of the behavior of buried thermoplastics pipes was carried out. The project had input and participants from both the plastic pipe industry as well as from external organizations. Six external leading experts in the field of pipeline design, not necessarily plastics pipes design, have been...
Author(s) : Dominique GUEUGNAUT, Pascal AUSSANT, Romuald BOUAFFRE, Myriam BECHROURI
Concerns regarding the environment and sustainable development have revived interest in the reprocessing and re-use of polymer materials from manufactured objects that have reached the end of their operating life. Within this framework, formal professional agreements have been put in place at global level under the...
Author(s) : Paul J. Freudenthaler, Joerg Fischer, Mathias Eder, Reinhold W. Lang
For controlled water disinfection, typically chlorine is used and preliminary studies demonstrate its aging and crack growth acceleration effects on polyolefin pipe materials [1, 2]. Although the use of recycled plastics is not prohibited in some ISO standards for polyolefin piping systems [3–5], only small amounts...
Author(s) : Shuhei Nishida, Shintaro Iwasaki, Hidefumi Yamanaka, Takahiro Kasatani
Polyethylene pipelines have been used for natural gas service applications for over 40 years in Japan. It is thought that they will continue to be used widely for many years. Therefore, it is important to confirm the conditions of the existing pipelines being used for the long term. In this study, polyethylene pipes...
Author(s) : Ernst van der Stok
For PE 100-RC, two tests are still under development for pipes: the point load test (PLT) and the accelerated notch pipe test (aNPT). The PLT was developed by a project group consisting of manufacturers and end users. The PLT determines the resistance to point loads as they can occur in practice. An earlier study...
Author(s) : Dr. Holger Brüning, Serge Hascoët, Yann Delanne, Didier Nozahic, Jawdat Mansour, José Santana
RTE operates, maintains and develops the French electricity network, including the High and very High Voltage cable lines. Their network is the largest in Europe and includes over 6400 km of underground HV links operated in 2018. The company is modernizing and developing its network by investing 1.5 billion euros per...
Author(s) : Greg Scoby, PE
This paper will detail the steps taken during adoption of HDPE for potable water systems improvements including material justification, creation of related specifications, investigation of available piping components, qualification of contractors and the construction/inspection of related systems. The City of...
Author(s) : Stephan Kneck, Henrik Iskov
It has become ever clearer that the resources of natural gas are an energy source, which will be less important in the future due to limitations in use of natural reserves. In order to prepare for the future the gas industry is looking at the alternative fuel gases, one such fuel gas is hydrogen. In order to prepare...
Author(s) : Christian Schalich
Plastic pipes for infrastructure and building applications are precisely specified with regards to wall thickness and diameter. Pipe manufacturers use different measuring methods in order to ensure the required dimensional accuracy and maintain a constant high quality. This paper introduces a measuring system based on...
Author(s) : Mitsuaki Tokiyoshi, Yuichi Shibao, Yoshitaka Watanabe, Takeshi Yoshioka, Takashi Oka, Kohei Sasaki
It was common to use those pipelines for Steel in Japan. However Steel pipes have the long standing problems that it has been needed maintenance costs for rust prevention and antifouling property. Therefore it had been carried out the project that large diameter polyethylene pipeline applied for circulating water...
Author(s) : Eng. Grigorios Vigellis, Eng. Mohamed Hageb
Continuous development and innovation in the production of plastic pipes made by high density polyethylene (HDPE) has enabled the industry to produce much larger diameter systems than ever believed possible. The enablers for production of such large plastic pipes are three main pillars: continuous innovation...
Author(s) : Jennifer Ravereau, Jose Teixeira Pinto, Malena Bernabeu, Jose Alacid, Jean-Philippe Le Goff, Frederic Mohier, Benjamin Rabaud
Drinking water network fittings such as valves are made of brass materials known to be robust over long periods. Due to the gradual inflation metallic raw material costs, composite plastic valves have grown in market share. Uncertainties remain, however, on their long-term reliability. The aim of this work is to...
Author(s) : C. Losher and P.V. Mercea
In the framework of the German Environmental Agency (UBA) requirements of plastic articles in contact with drinking water (KTW-BWGL-guideline), the compliance is verified by comparing so-called “expected concentrations at tap”, C tap , of substances contained in the plastics with specific limits in drinking water...
Author(s) : Lukas Travnicek, Pavel Hutar, Jan Poduska, Andreas Frank, Florian Arbeiter, Jaroslav Kucera, Jiri Sadilek, Gerald Pinter, Lubos Nahlik
The application of recycled material in pressure piping systems has been considered lately – it was suggested, that the recycled polyethylene could be used as a part of a multilayer pipe together with virgin material. This type of pressure pipes is not availableon the market yet, so their properties can be only...
Author(s) : Horst Stimmelmayr, Peter Sejersen
The voluntary certification scheme for plastic multilayer piping systems for hot and cold drinking water inside buildings is a joint effort of two key European organizations. It was initiated in close cooperation with the Brussels based European trade association of plastic pipe and fittings manufacturers, TEPPFA....
Members of the Association
