“NS-1 condenser fitting for 3/4-inch pipes”.
It's may not be the world's most exciting sentence, but it marks the beginning of one of the foundations for our modern society: standardisation.
100 years have passed since this first standard was introduced by the Standardisation Committee of the Norwegian Industrial Association (Norges Industriforbunds Standardiseringskomité), writes Standards Norway in their anniversary pamphlet.
Already back then, the first standardisation efforts created economic benefits and efficiency gains.
In the years since, standardisation has laid the foundations for for efficiency, profitability and technological innovation throughout our society – so that everything from A4-sized sheets of paper, to power plugs that fit into sockets, to stairs that you don’t trip on, have become things we take completely for granted.
Standards for life cycle assessments and the circular economy
Standardisation is important for assessing the sustainability and environmental impacts of products and services as well. The first ISO standards for life cycle assessments (LCA) were introduced in 2006.
These define how to carry out LCA projects. Since then, several standards that ensure a shared understanding of how LCAs should be conducted when preparing environmental product declarations (EPDs) have been developed.
Recently, the standard for social life cycle assessment (ISO 14075) was published. In addition, three new standards relating to the circular economy have been introduced (see fact box).
Fact box: Different standards related to environmental and sustainability
- ISO 14025: Environmental labels and declarations – Type III environmental declarations – Principles and procedures
- ISO 14040: Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Principles and framework
- ISO 14044: Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Requirements and guidelines
- ISO 14075: Environmental management – Principles and framework for social life cycle assessme
- ISO: 21930: Sustainability in buildings and civil engineering works – Core rules for environmental product declarations of construction products and services
- ISO 59004: Circular economy – Vocabulary, principles and guidance for implementation
- ISO 59010: Circular economy – Guidance on the transition of business models and value networks
- ISO 59020: Circular economy – Measuring and assessing circularity performance
- EN 15804: Sustainability of construction works – Environmental product declarations – Core rules for the product category of construction products
Standards democratise and harmonise environmental documentation:
Good standards for documentation lower the threshold for reporting on environmental impacts. This is an important principle in standardisation: to make such reporting democratic and accessible, so that more companies – not only the biggest ones – can afford to do it.
NORSUS has contributed to the development of environmental product declarations (EPDs) internationally. They are built on a series of standards, including overarching standards defining the principles for developing EPDs, how the results should be reported, as well as more specific standards that define rules for calculations for certain product types.
Standardisation is also an important tool for aligning different academic practices used in documenting environmental impacts, increasing comparability, credibility and reliability of the documentation.
Fair comparisons for companies, investors and consumers are enabled by standards
Recognised international standards ensure genuine grounds for comparison. This helps to counteract greenwashing.
They are also important for public authorities and other procurers that focus on environmental footprints (for example Statsbygg – one of the largest public procurers in Norway), which gives companies strong incentives to focus their efforts towards becoming more environmentally friendly.
Enabling producers further down the value chain to compare and choose sustainable raw materials for their products means that the economy is pushed in a greener direction from the bottom (raw materials) and upwards – or in other words: throughout the entire life cycle.
Standards create arenas where theory and practice meet
Since the condenser fitting was introduced 100 years ago, standardisation efforts have grown to become a vast – and quite impressive – global collective effort, where both academia and industry participate actively.
Slike prosesser, der teori og praksisfeltet møtes, bidrar i seg selv til økt kvalitet og relevans på både forskning og standarder, men er ikke uten utfordringer.
Sterke industriaktører eller stater kan ha interesse av å arbeide frem standarder med krav som favoriserer deres produkter eller teknologi, og disse interessene kan være i konflikt med andre aktørers interesser.
I slike konfliktsituasjoner kan akademia ofte fungere som aktører uten spesifikke interesser, som gjør at deres vurdering blir vektlagt. I tillegg til dyp fagkunnskap, har nøytrale fagmiljøer derfor en svært viktig rolle i utviklingen av standarder som tjener samfunnet generelt og ikke bare spesifikke partsinteresser.
At the same time, academic communities do not always agree in their recommendations. Standardisation processes make it possible to develop pragmatic compromises, and many stakeholders recognise this as necessary to make environmental improvements possible in practice, even when they do not fully agree with all syntax.
Small institute, big impact
Academic participation in standardisation work makes a difference. We’ve seen this through NORSUS’ long-standing work in standardisation efforts both nationally and internationally.
Although we are a small institute, we have over the years had considerable influence on the professional perspectives adopted in the standardisation processes in which we participate. The quality of our contributions is continually confirmed through requests to participate and lead new standardisation efforts.
NORSUS has a good overview of upcoming and ongoing standardisation through involvement in international and European standardisation committees under ISO/TC59/SC17, CEN/TC-350 and CEN/TC-442. The product-specific rules (PCRs) in EPDs are under continuous development, and NORSUS contributes actively to improving the quality and credibility of these rules.
Read more about our work on standardisation here:
Senior Researcher Anne Rønning was named Standard Norway's Sustainability Hero for 2024!
In 20025 we started the project SeConDPass