In addition to Hollingsbee’s Lighting Guide, Mazzei discusses what to look for when specifying products for a sustainable criteria, and expands on additional assesments to be aware of.

Specifying truly sustainable products is not as easy as it seems. The market is full of green labels and images of leaves stamped on products, often used to cover unsustainable practices – in other words, greenwashing.

It is important that specifiers look for clues and evidence of real sustainable efforts from companies, such as verification from respected agencies and assessment results reported using common metrics. Ideally everybody should be using the same metrics to assess environmental impacts, so it is important to follow advice from industry organisations on the best actions to take and methodology options to adopt.

We are currently seeing manufacturers investing efforts into publishing environmental impact information at product level, in different ways:

– Using CIBSE TM66, to assess a product’s circular economy performance

– Using CIBSE TM65, to estimate a product’s embodied carbon

– Using Life Cycle Assessment to create Environmental Product Declarations, for a comprehensive range of impacts.

– CIBSE TM65 and TM66 are industry-led assessment methods which have been developed to help companies assess and report environmental aspects of products – embodied carbon and circular economy performance, respectively.

TM66 was developed specifically for the lighting industry and is based on a detailed questionnaire investigating characteristics such as repairability, easy disassembly, availability of spare parts and information for luminaires. Evidence of these and several other features are also required to be able to assign a circularity score to a product – from 0 to 4 – to categorise its circularity from low to excellent. Being able to easily evaluate luminaires this way allows to assess whether products on the market are able to support the development of a circular economy in the lighting industry, and it also helps manufacturers understand which aspects of their products they can change to achieve a higher circularity score for their luminaires.

TM65’s embodied carbon assessment method was initially developed for the wider MEP (mechanical, electrical and public health) sector, however in 2023 an update was published that contained lighting-specific information: TM65.2. The objective of TM65 is to give manufacturers a way to estimate the embodied carbon of their products in the absence of an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). TM65’s assessment method was created to be easily understandable and applicable by any manufacturer, as it is an accessible and straightforward calculation methodology based on some assumptions and simplifications and not as granular as a full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). For this reason, although an alignment can be observed, often the results of the TM65 calculations are not as accurate as the results of a full LCA, due to the trade-off between accuracy and simplicity of the approach. The TM65.2 lighting update is able to capture some aspects of products that were overlooked in the original version, and contribute to achieve more accurate results.

Life Cycle Assessment is a robust and globally recognised environmental assessment methodology, regulated by specific standards. For commercial communications, it is often preferred to report LCA results as third-party verified declarations, such as EPDs. These documents are published by organisations called Programme Operators, which, in addition to the standard rules of LCA, can develop Product Category Rules (PCRs) and Product Specific Rules (PSRs). These are useful to be able to adapt LCA to a type of product with specific characteristics, such as luminaires. It is important that the rules developed by different Programme Operators are aligned: this is why LightingEurope decided to endorse the PSR0014 by PEP Ecopassport as the most comprehensive set of rules for lighting products.

What is important for specifiers is to be careful when comparing impacts when they were obtained using different methodologies; this is why getting familiar with the different types of assessment schemes and methodologies available is now becoming crucial in the industry.

Companies can also communicate their efforts to be more sustainable through company-level assessment schemes, for example looking at Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and Net Zero ambitions, or focused on the wider meaning of sustainability – including also social and economic wellbeing – through schemes like B Corp or EcoVadis. The B Corp badge is the result of an assessment measuring a company’s performance against features that ensure inclusive, equitable and regenerative development, also supported by the company’s transparency and commitment. Similarly, EcoVadis is a platform that provides sustainability rating for businesses, looking at environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement, plus a dedicated section for carbon emissions.

Independently on the type of environmental assessment a company chooses to adopt, it is pivotal that the results are communicated transparently to the public. This is the only way we can truly support sustainability and empower people to make the right choices.

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