The Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) is an LCA based method aimed to assess the environmental impacts of a products through quantitative indicators. Examples of indicators are global warming potential, water consumption, natural resources consumption. The PREFER project foresees the PEF application to cluster average products and groups of enterprises.

A preliminary phase of the project is an international  survey aimed to analyse LCA studies applied at average products or groups of companies. The survey will detect excellence cases and best practices.

The following action is aimed to identify and assess, in a life cycle perspective, the environmental impacts of a characterizing product of each cluster involved in the project. The partners implement the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of each cluster product. The LCA is performer according the PEF methodology developed by the European Commission and adopted by the Recommendation 2013/179/CE. The action aim is the realization of 8 PEFs (at least one for each cluster). The scheduled activities allow testing the European methodology and disseminating this new approach among small and medium companies.

For each characterizing product of the clusters is identified the functional unit and the system boundaries. The PEF is implemented after the data collection.

The partners define a PEF Category Rules (PEFCR) based on the results emerged from the studies. The PEFCR will be tested in the following project actions.