EU FP7 Project: myEcoCost - A Consumer Oriented Prototype – Forming the Nucleus of a Novel Ecological Accounting System

Co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, the three year project is undertaken by a consortium of nine teams from four EU countries, of which the NTU team is a core member and key technology provider. With the total project funding €3,781,340 including the European Commission’s grant €2,959,784, experts develop an electronic system to provide consumers across the globe with a rating of how sustainable a product or service is.

myEcoCost is a novel, bottom up approach to measuring the resource efficiency of products, services and technologies. This project will also demonstrate how it is technically possible to provide timely and accurate resource efficiency statements applicable to business, industry and the everyday consumer.

This project is creating a methodology that harmonizes a global network of resource accounting nodes. It provides a means of measuring a product or service’s usage of natural resources in order to inform all stakeholders of this environmentally relevant information. Consumers, who have historically been overlooked in eco accountability research, are included in the myEcoCost architecture as a primary stakeholder. In this way myEcoCost will enable consumers to become aware of their environmental impact and be incentivised to toe the sustainability line.

Co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, the three year project is being undertaken by a consortium coordinated by Bavarian-based company TriaGnoSys. As part of a £2.6 million study, experts are developing an electronic system to provide consumers across the globe with a rating of how sustainable a product or service is.

Using smartphones, myEcoCost will enable people to scan barcodes and instantly receive data on a product before they buy it. The aim is for consumers to easily identify which products have the smallest environmental footprint, which use the least resources and which are the healthiest for them to consume.

Professor Daizhong Su is Professor of Design Engineering and Head of the Advanced Design and Manufacturing Engineering Centre. As a principal investigator or co-investigator, Professor Su successfully conducted/conducts a number of collaborative research projects supported by the European Commission, research councils, governmental departments, regional development agencies, industries, and other external funding bodies.

The project also involves several figures from NTU dealing with research, demonstration, dissemination, and management:

• Professor Marjan Sarshar
• Dr Wenjie Peng

The project links business added value to a measurement of aggregated resource usage as accepted environmental pressure indicator which goes beyond single issue indicators. Using an Internet-based Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) relevant and timely data is passed from supplier to customer recursively through the whole value chain to produce ecological costs (ecoCosts) for each product or service. The Advanced Design and Manufacturing Engineering Centre makes major contributions to the ecoCost calculation models and the communications infrastructure.

For more information and updates, visit the myEcoCost website.

• TriaGnoSys (Germany)
• Boots (UK)
• Ecover (Belgium)
• GS1 (Germany)
• CFF Carbon Calculator (UK)
• the Wuppertal Institute (Germany)
• Enviro Data (Sweden)
• Robert Mostyn (UK)

• Daizhong Su and You Wu, Keynote Speech, ‘Product eco-cost through supply chain and logistic’, 3rd International Conference on Innovative Development of E-commerce and Logistics (ICIDEL2017), 18 November 2017, Zhengzhou, China
• Geibler, J. v.; Riera, N.; Echternacht, L.; Björling, S.; Domen, T.; Dupont, E.; Hermenier, R.; Jenkins, A.; Kimmel, A.; Kresse, S.; Kühndel, F.; Liedtke, C.; Mostyn, R.; Peng, W.; Pescio, E.; Ren, Z.; Schaller, S.; Smith, J.; Stevens, G.; Su, D.; Werner, M.; Wiesen, K.; Wu, Y. (2015): myEcoCost - Forming the Nucleus of a Novel Environmental Accounting System: Vision, prototype and way forward. Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Wuppertal.
• J. von Geibler, K. Wiesen, R.S. Mostyn, M. Werner, N. Riera, D. Su, S.E. Björling, T. Domen, J. Smith, A. Jenkins and S. Kresse, ‘Forming the Nucleus of a Novel Ecological Accounting System: The myEcoCost Approach’, Journal ‘Key Engineering Materials’, Volume 572 (2014) ISSN 1013-9826, pp78-83.