Sustainability Certification for Biobased Systems

SUSTCERT4BIOBASED project is set on fostering the adoption of effective and robust sustainability certification schemes and business-to-business labels for industrial biobased systems to support tracing the sustainability of biobased products along the value chains and trades within the EU and globally for responsible production and consumption. To this end, a monitoring system will be developed with a life-cycle perspective along four themes (environment, social, economic and governance) considering the complexity and relationships of all dimensions of sustainability and the rules and procedures on how the schemes are managed. This system will be optimized with pilot audit in practice and testing on existing schemes/labels for biobased systems evaluating their performance in the different themes and their coverage of the list of minimum requirements. Costs and benefits from the adoption of certification schemes and labels will be assessed, considering actual economic as well as internalized environmental and social ones. Data will be generated on volumes of biological resources and biobased products in global trade flow and extent of their certification. We will leverage the results of the project to provide best practices and recommendations to 4 key target groups: policy makers, sustainability system community, industrial biobased value chain actors, and regional/rural bioeconomy stakeholders. Our vision is that this will result in harmonized system requirements, continuous improvement and enhanced adoption of sustainability certification schemes and labels, and provide a significant contribution towards establishing a circular and sustainable bio-based industry for Europe contributing to the Bioeconomy Strategy and Green Deal. The large multi-sectorial stakeholders involvement (through an international Network of Interest domain and a comprehensive Advisory Board) will enable SUSTCERT4BIOBASED to increase outreach and aligning with ongoing international efforts.