ABSTRACT
Full Product Transparency (FPT) is having, and providing, a complete picture of the total environmental impact of a product throughout its life. The emphasis is on environmental impact, because the methodology for calculating this, based on a lifecycle assessment, is much more established. Lifecycle analysis (LCA) is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life. These are: raw materials, extraction, processing and transport; manufacturing; delivery and installation; customer use; and end of life. The LCA approach studies whole product systems and thus enables businesses to avoid mitigating one environmental impact at the expense of aggravating another. Product category rules (PCR) are a set of regulations for products in a sector or category that are established by an independent technical committee that includes experts from that sector. An environmental product declaration (EPD) is a statement of a product's 'ingredients' and environmental impacts across its lifecycle.
