How we select RONA ECO and Eco-Responsible products
To avoid falling into any greenwashing traps, RONA decided to adopt a strict scientific method called the “life cycle approach.”
Rather than looking only at the product’s obvious ecological features, this approach looks at the total environmental performance over the product’s entire lifetime, from extraction of primary resources to end-of-life, including manufacturing, transportation, packaging and use. The life cycle approach:
- Prevents the shifting of environmental problems from one step of the life cycle to another
- Simultaneously considers several different environmental issues
To offer our customers products that truly provide better environmental performance than conventional products, RONA worked with experts from the International Chair in Life Cycle Assessment at the Polytéchnique de Montréal to develop a rigorous product selection method based on the life cycle approach.
As you will see throughout this guide, the selected products – labelled eco-responsible or RONA ECO – offer better environmental performance than conventional products. These eco-responsible products reduce the impact related to the key environmental problems for each product category, and the RONA ECO product is the best choice available to meet a particular need, providing better environmental performance than a conventional product over its entire life cycle.
By working with the expert team at the International Chair, RONA is being proactive and going beyond applicable environmental regulations. The life cycle assessment work on our products supports the company’s voluntary promotion of sustainable production and consumption.
Our product selection methodology
Right from the start we want to mention that RONA ECO and eco-responsible products are selected by the experts from the International Chair, an independent third party, after an in-depth, transparent and rigorous process.
To be considered eco-responsible, a product must offer features that reduce its environmental impact when compared to similar conventional products. The product may be identified as being less toxic, biodegradable, made of recycled materials, etc. The first step in the selection process consists of verifying that supplier environmental claims are supported by credible, relevant evidence.
The second step consists of using the life cycle approach to demonstrate whether the claimed feature provides real and significant environmental benefits.
Having environmental features is not enough to identify a product as being more ecological: the features must generate impact reductions. For example, a product that is “compostable” is potentially more ecological than its non-compostable equivalent only if composting facilities exist where the product will end its useful life.
Not only must the features lead to reductions in environmental impact, but these reductions must be meaningful. The features must reduce the impact related to key environmental problems for this product category.
The assessment is always carried out using the life cycle approach, which assumes that products generate impacts at every stage of the life cycle: from the acquisition of the primary materials and manufacturing, to packaging, transportation, use and end-of-life.
For every environmental product feature, the consequences of that feature must be questioned at every stage of the life cycle. For example, a product made of a renewable material may not be recyclable at the end of life. Sometimes features displace the impact from one category to another: a product that consumes less energy may emit a pollutant that is noxious to human health. A good environmental feature should not shift the impact from one stage of the life cycle to another, or from one impact category to another.