Dr. Simon Schwarzwald, a sustainability expert in the certification schemes offered by Redcert GmbH, will gain insight into the importance of clarity, consistency and harmony of Sustainability Certification, gain insights from the Biolesser Project and explore the challenges faced in adapting standards to bio-based products.
In a rapidly evolving biological economy, ensuring sustainability and transparency is more important than ever. Certification bodies play an important role in verifying the environmental qualifications of bio-based products, but as sectors become more complex, there is also the challenge of adapting existing standards.
Dr. Simon Schwarzwald of Redcert shares his views on the evolving accreditation environment to highlight the importance of clear frameworks, digital innovation and consistent communication.
What are the main challenges faced by certification schemes and certification bodies when adapting standards to bio-based product details?
For authentication schemes like RedCert, finding the balance is all about it. On the one hand, you can set very strict requirements. This is perfect for the environment. However, if no one follows these guidelines, it will not be affected. On the other hand, diluting the requirements too much can lead to more companies participating, but there is no real benefit. It just becomes bureaucracy.
Authentication schemes must provide additional value. It must exceed legal requirements, but not to the extent that it cannot be implemented. Specifically, with regard to bio-based products, one major topic is the chain of mass balanced or custody models. Perhaps you are familiar with separation models where different material flows are physically separated. In contrast, mass balance allows for mixing and distributes based on sustainability characteristics and accounting rules. For example, one delivery from a plant that converts mixed materials may be considered sustainable under a mass balance, while another delivery is traditional. This concept can be confusing for both consumers and businesses. Therefore, it is important that these models be clearly defined at the highest regulatory and scheme levels.
It is essential to have a complete understanding of the principles of the scheme from the perspective of the certification body (audit parties). Inadequate management of the scheme can lead to misunderstandings between the scheme and the certification body, or between the auditors themselves. After all, one is human, and interpretations vary. Still, a working scheme should always lead to a consistent conclusion of a particular concept or product. That’s the basic problem with authentication. Its role is to build and implement consumer trust in the product. To do this, the results must be reproducible.
Auditors often face real complexities. The guidelines explain the general situation, but the practice is not necessarily simple and clear. You may encounter shortages or low quality data, not necessarily because of the company’s mistakes, but simply because it is the current state of the industry.
How do you think the introduction of new technologies, such as the Biorecer Project’s ICT tools, will allow accredited bodies to integrate these digital platforms?
The main problem with digital platforms is that many of them are so many that their quality and reliability is often not clear. Certification bodies usually require official verification to fully trust and rely on digital platforms.
Their job is to verify and verify, so relying heavily on one service while relying on external data can undermine core liability. This will make the certification body adopting the new platform, even if it is available.
Databases like ICT tools are still early on. Tools like this become more powerful as more users provide their data. From what I’ve seen, the demo is very strong and well designed. However, the number of products currently included is limited and there is no official release, so they are not yet ready for daily use. This is understandable at this stage.
There are many tools and platforms for traceability in the market. Personally, I think the ICT tools work well. But for those without a broad overview, determining which tools or platforms to trust can be confusing.
In the context of circular bioeconomics, it is essential to define clear standards. What criteria do you think are important when developing authentication schemes?
That’s something we know very well. Currently, RedCert operates three certification schemes and is associated with several larger companies. Sustainability is at the heart of RedCert. This is also a guide for the Biorecer Project Group.
Ideally, sustainability should be an absolute term. In reality, it is usually relative and measured using tools such as carbon dioxide emissions, water consumption, and more. This gives you a way to compare different materials and processes.
Sustainability is, of course, difficult to fully quantify. The certification system must establish core principles and essential standards. In the case of RedCert, important aspects when it comes to biomaterials include:
Biodiversity Soil Quality Protection of deforestation prohibits reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Our principles are based primarily on the EU Renewable Energy Directive, designed primarily for the biofuel sector, but are also adapted to the chemical industry. When it comes to agriculture, these principles provide a solid foundation. You can then build more on them.
In biocirculatory contexts, we often distinguish between crop-based materials, first-generation biomass from plants, and waste-based or residual materials such as agricultural by-products such as household waste and straws.
From our perspective, both are essential. Proper waste management is important for the circular economy, but that is not enough. There is always a loss, so additional input from crops and forest management is still needed.
The certification scheme then must determine:
Do these material types need to be separated? Can you compare them? How do you deal with GHG accounting between crops and waste-based inputs?
These are complex questions that need to be addressed thoroughly.
About the Biorecer project, which compiles a standardization toolkit with 149 national and international standards and 26 certification schemes. In your opinion, how useful is this toolkit?
As you said, this tool includes various standards and authentication schemes. They are not benchmarked accurately, but are listed for comparison. I think this is a very good approach. It helps to increase transparency for users, consumers and businesses who struggle to understand the differences between many systems, standards and labels.
At RedCert, we are also working to harmonize the certification environment. However, the system evolved independently, and therefore developed its own terminology. This challenge can already be seen in the Standardization Toolkit. I have a hard time comparing terms like “biomass,” “biomaterial,” “bioenergy,” and “biofuel.” This is because each standard uses a different language.
From our perspective, if a team of biorectors can establish a unified terminology, it would be very useful. It is a single, clear language that consumers, businesses and auditors can understand similarly and is not tied to the definition of a particular system. If we can reconcile the term, the comparison will be much easier, and it will become a real asset to the entire community.
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