Environmental protection

Product roadmaps

Defra is piloting product roadmaps to help improve the environmental performance of ten priority products.

What is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is a tool to help us better understand the environmental and, in some cases, wider sustainability impacts of a particular product and the ways in which these impacts can be mitigated. The roadmaps aim to:

  • identify the impacts that occur across each product’s life cycle
  • define a vision for each product to help address its impacts and make it more sustainable
  • set out a course of action - comprising short, medium and long-term measures aimed at the life cycle stages generating the highest impacts - to achieve that vision

The roadmaps are being developed gradually and collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders.

What products are we looking at?

The first set of roadmaps focus on the following ten products from four high impact product areas:

Priority area

Product

Food and drink

Passenger transport

Buildings
(including construction and appliances)

Clothing and textiles

How have these products been selected?

Evidence shows that certain product groupings generate most of the overall impacts on the environment at both a domestic and international level.

For example the EU-25 study, ‘The environmental impact of products’  (EIPRO), a principal EU source of evidence, shows that four product groupings account for 70-80% of all environmental impacts and 60% of consumer expenditure. These are:

  • food and drink (20-30% of impacts)
  • passenger transport (15-35% of impacts)
  • housing, including buildings, construction and appliances (20-35% of impacts)
  • clothing (5-10% of impacts)

Data is not currently available below this level to indicate which particular products have the highest impacts, but the ten selected products cause significant environmental impacts in at least one area or life cycle stage.

What is a product ‘life cycle’?

This refers to the stages a product progresses through, typically these include: raw material, production, distribution and retail, consumer use and end of life.

What are the ‘impacts’?

At the different life cycle stages, impacts can include:

  • Environmental: greenhouse has emissions, air and water pollution, resource depletion and biodiversity loss
  • Social: child labour, health and safety risks, poor working conditions and low wages

How will impacts be addressed?

Through the road mapping process we will work with stakeholders to agree a range of practical actions and interventions to improve sustainability performance. Interventions could include:

    • voluntary agreements
    • product standards
    • better labelling
    • improved consumer information
    • sustainable procurement
    • fiscal instruments
    • better regulation

    Page last modified: 10 July 2008

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs