Wine Environmental Footprint: the EU adopts the definition of representative wine product.

This represents a major milestone of this EU ‘Wine PEF pilot’ that aims at shaping harmonized methodologies and consistent solutions for voluntary footprint measurement and communication of environmental performance of wines from a cradle-to-grave perspective, under the umbrella of the European Commission’s Product Environmental Footprint initiative (PEF). The representative wine product has been defined taking in consideration the opinion from relevant interested stakeholders in the framework of a public consultation. This model will be now used to identify the most relevant life cycle stages, processes, impact categories, definition of benchmark to measure the environmental performance of wine products. The outcomes from the wine pilot will be intended to become the specific PEF rules to be used by all stakeholders in the EU wine sector or even internationally who voluntarily decide to measure the environmental performance of their wine products. Following an in-depth evaluation of the results of the pilots the European Commission may decide on further policy applications. Wine companies, associations and other relevant stakeholders in the wine value chain willing to join the ‘Wine PEF Pilot’ are invited to express their interest to [email protected]

---END---

About the Wine PEF Pilot project

The Wine PEF Pilot project partners are:

•   Comité Européen des Entreprises Vins (CEEV)  - Coordinator
•   Pernod Ricard Winemakers Spain
•   Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC) &  three Champagne companies
•   Unione Italiana Vini (UIV)
•   Soc Agricola Salcheto
•   The European Container Glass Federation (FEVE)
•   The European Cork association (Celiege)
•   Amcor
•   Nomacorc
•   Andalusian Institute of Technology (IAT)
•   UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle & Climate Change (ESCI-UPF)

The coordinator of the project’s TS is the Comité Européen des Entreprises Vins (CEEV - www.ceev.eu) who represents the wine companies in the European Union. It brings together 24 national organisations. With more than 7.000 companies, mainly SMEs, and more than 200.000 direct jobs in the EU, its members produce and market the vast majority of quality European wines, with and without a geographical indication, and account for over 90% of European wine exports. With around 8,8 billion € worth of exports every year, the wine sector makes a contribution of over 6 billion € to the EU trade balance.

These partners participate at the Technical Secretariat (TS) of the Wine PEF Pilot and collaborate for the definition of EU methodologies and information solutions that are appropriate and adapted for measuring and communicating wine environmental performance.

In the area of environmental sustainability, CEEV aims at promoting initiatives that contribute to the improvement of the environmental performance of competitive EU Wines and sector by preserving its natural assets and improving environmental sustainable viti-viniculture practices, preventing disproportionate burdens, barriers to trade and distortions of competition, and boosting the competitiveness of a responsible and sustainable wine sector.

The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) is an initiative of the European Commission which aims at developing harmonized methodologies for voluntary footprint measurement.