Pef: the environmental relevance of PM Serramenti products.

In order to have wooden windows and doors installed in your home, forests must be cultivated sustainably, the wood extracted from trees must be cut, sanded, and finished, the wooden components of the windows and doors must be painted and assembled, the hardware and any glass must be installed in each window and door, and finally, they must be packaged for transport. An empirical analysis method estimates the potential environmental impact of all these stages of wood processing for the production of windows and doors. It is called Pef – Product Environmental Footprint – and was introduced by the European Commission to provide clear and reliable information on the consequences that products, in this project windows and doors, will have on the environment where they perform their functions. The Brussels Commission's intention is to bring order to the more than 200 more or less reliable environmental labels and declarations on the markets of European countries. On the one hand, companies often cannot find the right means of communication to publicize their environmental performance, and on the other, consumers, faced with so many options, do not know who to trust and how to make their purchasing decisions. This is also why, in addition to the estimate calculated for each brand in a specific sector, the Pef also provides a comparative analysis that forecasts the potential environmental impact of several brands in order to illustrate, with data, which brand is the best in that sector from an environmental point of view.

For its sector, the PM Serramenti project lasted three and a half years and was carried out in collaboration with the LegnoLegno Consortium and the University of Bergamo as part of Life Magis, the program promoted by the Ministry of Ecological Transition that helps companies make Italian products with environmentally relevant performance recognizable on the market, thanks to the dissemination of the Made Green in Italy mark and the use of PEF.

The method collected data in accordance with standards defined by the European Commission and processed using indicators provided by the manufacturer—in this case, PM Serramenti—to measure the potential environmental impact of wooden doors and windows throughout their life cycle. Climate change, human toxicity, radiation, terrestrial eutrophication, particulate matter, and water use are some of the impact categories to which the indicators for assessing environmental consequences were applied. The end result was a benchmark useful to PM Serramenti, aimed both internally at improving the environmental performance of its production process and externally at communication initiatives capable of supporting the company in promoting informed purchasing choices. This innovative experience is in line with the research objectives of Edinnova, the technological innovation network promoted by Confindustria Bergamo, of which PM Serramenti is a member.