Services

 

How we support companies in supply chains and networks:

•  Preventing emergency: Issue identification
•  Understanding emergency: Reverse environmental engineering
•  Preference lists
•  Supply chain management and know-how trustee
•  Education and training
  

 

Issue Identification

EPEA supports companies by identifying social and environmental issues associated with the properties of their products. EPEA's expertise concerns the fate of these products after use and validates raw material sourcing. EPEA identifies practices that may cause liabilities or infringe on social taboos for manufacturers, traders, brands.

 

Reverse Environmental Engineering

EPEA supports clients with information on errors in past design processes. This service can be applied to past product development processes, or legislation after errors became manifest, or for the identification of optimization opportunities.

Preference Lists (P-lists)

Conventional environmental standards are based on excluding or limiting certain chemicals. EPEA takes a different approach with preference lists (P-lists). These lists focus on materials that can be used due to their favorable environmental and health properties. Rather than listing materials to exclude, preference lists give materials to include.

P-lists contain the best identifiable materials for a given function, like textile dying or plastics stabilization. The development of a P-list occurs in the context of the materials' function in either a consumption product or a service product, depending on the Cradle to Cradle strategy most appropriate for a given product design. The alignment of material properties with requirements of the Cradle to Cradle Design results in an ABC-X categorization.

Benefits of P-lists:

•  There are no perfect products. As long as problems of non-renewable resources and energy exist, systems will not be optimal. However, P-lists allow progress to be measured over time with an ABC-X categorization.

•  With P-lists as tools, improvement is visible for insiders. P-lists serve as an ideal communication tool between clients and their respective suppliers.

Know-how Management in the Supply Network

EPEA facilitates the business-to-business relationship between suppliers and clients in supply chains as a know-how trustee. EPEA receives confidential information from suppliers and - respecting the confidentiality of this information - translates the information into a positively formulated statement on the environmental quality of a supplier's products. This statement on the Cradle to Cradle quality of a supplier's materials can be integrated in the development of a statement on the quality of the client's products.

 

Intellectual Property

EPEA does not intervene in pricing at any level between suppliers and their respective clients in the production network and therefore retains the credibility as an independent third-party required to fulfill its function as trustee.

This approach allows producers to overcome the limits to environmental quality that result from the lack of transparency regarding the materials used in conventional products. Comprehensively defined environmental quality can be established in addition to traditional aspects of product quality and performance.

Cradle to Cradle Design does not alter common intellectual property understanding: Products and inventions belong to producers.
Marketing claims referring to cooperation with EPEA and results achieved from the application of Cradle to Cradle Design (including lists of preferred raw materials and chemicals) are proprietary to EPEA.

 

Education and Training

EPEA organizes and takes part to basic education programs and skill enhancement workshops on environmental- and design-related issues. Clients are individual companies, business development organizations and schools for design, engineering, or management.