PEF Dashboard Purpose
The European Commission proposed the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) as a common way of measuring environmental performance (EU Commission Recommendation 2021/2279). The PEF is the EU recommended Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based method to quantify the environmental impacts of products (goods or services).
The overarching purpose of PEF information is to enable to reduce the environmental impacts of goods, services and organisations taking into account supply chain activities (from extraction of raw materials, through production and use to final waste management). This purpose is achieved through the provision of detailed requirements for modelling the environmental impacts of the flows of material/energy and the emissions and waste streams associated with a product throughout the life cycle.
Makersite calculates the PEF score based on Product Category Rules mapped against UNSPSC Product Categories, which are themselves mapped to Makersite products.
Prerequisites
PEF Dashboard displays and interprets life cycle data related to your product. If no data is available, you will get an error when trying to use the dashboard.
Your Product Group must have a Product Category assigned. This is typically done during BOM import, but you can also assign the category manually in the Compose page. Product Category Rules must be established for that Product Category in Makersite.
Your Product Group must have a life cycle model calculated based on the PCRs of the assigned Product Category.
Using PEF Dashboard
Open your Product Group.
Optionally, verify under Compose that your Product Group has the correct Product Category.
To make sure you're using the most recent data, you can select Generate/Recalculate LC models from the side menu. If you do, wait for the confirmation e-mail before proceeding. You can find your LC models under My Drive > Life Cycle Models.
Go to the Analyze page.
Select the apps drop-down from the toolbar, and select PEF Dashboard.
As a result, you are taken to the PEF Dashboard, which shows the PEF score of your product and a breakdown against every Impact Category. Since this is a lot of data, Makersite provides the following functionality to make it easier to interpret:
You can select Show Footnote to get an explanation for each category below the main table.
Above the table, you can switch between different Product Category Rules for your product.
You can export your data using the Export to PDF button at the bottom of the page.
You can verify your product against potential alternatives - read about scenario analysis below.
Running PEF Scenario Analysis
Scenario analysis allows you to check how the PEF score of your product (reference) compares against potential alternatives.
On your PEF Dashboard, select Configure Product Alternatives under Scenario Analysis.
Search for and select alternative products to compare with the active product (shown as Reference). Click Select to confirm.
You can now see the PEF scores for the selected alternatives compared to your product. You can use this data in your decision-making process related to PEF optimization.
What's Next?
You can share the calculated data with third parties, for example LCA auditors.