EN 45557-2020 pdf download.General method for assessing the proportion of recycled material content in energy-related products.
5.2 Material declaration clustering and unspecified materials
The material declaration is a way to express the composition of the materials contained in a product or part. To establish a material declaration, each part of the product shall he assessed for the mass of its constituent materials, according to the scope of assessment (see 5.1). The masses of the respective material fractions shall be summed up to obtain the material composition of the whole part/product.
In many cases a given material type can represent different grades of the same material that are not identical but very similar and thus share the majority of physical and chemical properties.
EXAMPLE Steel or polypropylene (PP) are produced in different grades for specific applications. The Society of Automotive Engineers lists among others different grades of nickel-chromium steels with varying proportion of nickel and chromium, e.g. 3 lxx, 32xx, 33xx, 34xx. For polypropylene, the three main grades are homopolymer PP. random copolymer PP. block copolymer PP.
Various grades of a material type shall be treated as one material to determine the proportion of recycled materials content of a product. Alloys may require the allocation to a certain material. The users of this document shall define the applicable material clusters for their respective product group.
It may be necessary to exclude parts from allocation to specific material clusters due to their small size. complexity of their material composition or for other reasons, e.g. administrative or legal. To keep the mass balance even, these unspecified parts/materials shall be classified as “other materialsN and be accounted for in the total mass of the product. These “other materials” shall be treated as primary material. The users of this document may determine limits for materials classified as mother materials if applicable.
5.3 Distinction between pre-consumer material and post-consumer material
5.3.1 General
Only pre-consumer materials and post-consumer materials shall count towards recycled materials content, in accordance with the definition provided in Clause 3, and in line with specific guidelines provided in Annex A for different material types.
Recycled material content is typically brought into a production process to substitute some primary material. The recycled material can be pre-consumer or post-consumer material. The point of substitution is reached when the different properties of the input materials combine into an output comprised of homogenous material of defined properties.
5.3.2 Pre-consumer material
A material, which is reclaimed and reutilized within the same process that generated it shall not count towards pre-consumer material. A material which is not reclaimed and reutilized within the same process that generated it, and which undergoes material preparation, shall count towards preconsumer material. This general concept is visualized in Figure 1.
A material, which is recovered within the same process that generated it, as shown in Figure 1, shall not count as pre-consumer material for recycled materials content. For detailed information on specific types of materials see Annex A.
EXAMPLE For most materials the recycled material content is fixed in a process where the material is transformed from a liquid to a solid state. In the case of steel making, the recycled material content is fixed after melting and casting into a solid slab, bloom, billet or ingot. Scrap originating from the meltshop, such as solidified steel from steelmaking vessels (skulls) or rejected castings, would be excluded from the calculation of preconsumer material, because they can be reclaimed within the same melting process that generated them. This is regardless of the fact that the scrap may need to be further prepared In order to make It suitable for use In a production process, such as cutting to size. In the case of plastic injection moulding, rejects from this process which are reclaimed and reutilized within the same process would not be considered pre-consumer material.
It is also important to describe where process A ends. Being part of the same process A can include continuous processes (i.e. material or product cannot be diverted to different processing steps until the end of that process step). At the end of the process A, the output can no longer change its inherent recycled materials content (i.e. it is frozen/fixed). Material recovered from further processing after process A could be included as pre-consumer material, because it has to go back to process A.
5.3.3 Post-consumer material
Once products have reached the end of their life, materials obtained from collected waste and treated waste shall be considered post-consumer materials (see Figure 2). Products may reach the end of their life shortly after being traded commercially or having left the final manufacturing facility. This might happen when products are damaged or cannot be sold from their distribution chain (e.g. a new version of a product replaces the previous one which cannot be sold anymore). Materials can only be considered post-consumer after they have become part of a finished product for the end-user and are subsequently discarded.
NOTE In this document, the term ‘finished product for the end-user is used to describe a fully assembled product. The notion of a finished product is used to distinguish product manufacturers from material/part manufacturers.EN 45557-2020 pdf download.
EN 45557-2020 pdf download
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