This report provides an in-depth examination of the requirements for creating and substantiating verifiable sustainability claims within the regulatory framework of the European Green Deal. It focuses on the EU Commission's proposed Green Claims Directive, alongside related legislative initiatives such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). These frameworks collectively aim to combat greenwashing and ensure that sustainability claims are factual, transparent, and credible. The report refers to a "verifiable sustainability claim" as one that is both correct and formulated in a way that it can be evaluated against objective, standardized criteria. It presents practical methodologies and tools, including checklists, to assess whether a claim is verifiable and whether a claim would comply with the current proposal of the EU Commission’s Green Claims Directive. To ensure relevance and practical guidance, real cases of sustainability statements and claims are studied at the participating process industry companies, regarding how to interpret, express, and set requirements for verifiability and substantiation of sustainability claims. This report also includes an extensive literature study presenting relevant directives, standards and other literature relevant to the subject of sustainability claims and green claims. The study extends beyond consumer-focused claims to explore implications for business-to-business communication and reporting. By integrating insights from international standards (e.g., ISO 14020, ISO 14067), certification systems (e.g., Nordic Swan, ISCC), and methodologies for lifecycle assessments and environmental product declarations (EPDs), the paper provides actionable guidance. Recommendations emphasize avoiding vague, misleading, or irrelevant claims and adopting structured approaches to ensure precision and compliance. In addition, this report, developed under the Climate-leading Process Industry initiative, not only supports industries in fulfilling regulatory obligations but also enables them to establish credibility and trust. It aligns with the EU’s broader climate objectives, including the “Fit for 55” initiative, aiming to reduce emissions by 55% by 2030 and achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

The construction sector is under a strong transformation, partly due to accelerating digitalization, and partly due to an increase in sustainability requirements. The drivers of digitalization are increased productivity, efficiency, and quality, whereas the requirements on sustainability performance are related to many external forces impacting the sector, such as stricter regulations on the verifiability of claims concerning resource efficiency, emissions, and waste management. In particular, the transport actors within the construction sector need a strategy to digitalize all their sustainability information. This report approaches this issue by integrating the BEAst (PEPPOL) standard for the construction sector’s data exchange with the ISO standard ISO 14033 for controlling the verifiability of quantitative sustainability information. The report shows how standards-based requirements on data exchange to and from all construction transport actors and stakeholders enable digitalization and data flows in a cost-efficient way and with short lead time to reduce administration, facilitate follow-up, enable traceability and verifiability, efficiency, and goal fulfillment combining societal and environmental benefits.

The construction sector is under a strong transformation, partly due to accelerating digitalization and partly due to an increase in sustainability requirements. The drivers of digitalization are increased productivity, efficiency, and quality, whereas the requirements on sustainability performance are related to many external forces impacting the sector, such as stricter regulations on the verifiability of claims concerning total resource efficiency, emissions, and waste management. In particular, this leads to the transport actors within the construction sector who need a strategy to digitalize their sustainability information handling, from data sources on vehicle, fuel, good, endpoints, and routes to total logistics commissions and projects, as well as how to integrate their data and information with other actors in the construction sector. This paper investigates this issue by assessing approaches to this combined challenge and shows how to integrate data exchange standards of the construction sector (the Swedish BEAst and the international PEPPOL) with an ISO standard for controlling the verifiability of quantitative sustainability information. The research shows how such standards-based requirements on data exchange between and from all construction transport actors and stakeholders throughout full product life cycles and total transport chains enable digitalization and data flows in a cost-efficient way and with short lead time. This in turn intends to reduce administrational costs and errors, as well as facilitate follow-up, traceability, verifiability, efficiency, as well as improves the managerial control necessary to reduce societal and environmental risks. © The Author(s)

The electric vehicle (EV) market and its implied battery resource management are in large and fast expansion. The European Union is developing directives for digital product passport for batteries, where much understanding and knowledge of battery management are quickly growing. Coordinating standards that can harmonize circular battery management and spread best practices is therefore in high demand. This research presents a review of existing standards that support managing circular EV battery lifecycles. It was performed to understand the maturity of the circular battery lifecycle, regarding battery performance and safety to workers, EV passengers, and the environment. The review structure was made by positioning standards to key steps throughout the circular battery lifecycle, highlighting steps where handling, producing, testing, servicing, and remanufacturing could be expected to support harmonization and guidance. The scope was limited to mainly lithium-ion batteries for vehicle traction but also included general standards concerning recycling, safe battery handling, and environmental management. The resulting mapping summarizes a catalog of existing and upcoming standards. It shows that many important standards are available. Much still needs to be developed, especially with regard to tests for reused batteries’ health and performance and with regard to how to synchronize performance specifications along and across the circular life cycle stages. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to provide such a comprehensive overview of standards that covers the whole circular electric vehicle battery lifecycles.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent a significant number of industries in need of moving towards more sustainable development. A sustainability perspective on business activities is today crucial for SMEs to achieve a new level of competitiveness. Identifying which is a suitable set of sustainability indicators for an individual SME is a big challenge. The availability of so many methods and systems can leave SMEs reluctant to implement them in their small business. Therefore, this research aims to create a sustainability maturity model for SMEs to visualize goals and assess progress on their transformation journey. Progress is assessed by indicators, exemplified by indicators of the Global Reporting Initiative and the maturity is verified as stepwise growth along international management system standards. Using the developed model, it is possible to determine the SMEs’ sustainability performance. The research has resulted in a stepwise classification of the organization’s maturity is compiled into training and auditing material in different regions and sectors. © 2024 The Author(s). Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This report is intended to guide the use of the Certified to LAST canvases. The concept of LAST establishes the fundamental content, trust and structure of an information system needed to verify the promises and claims about individual product’s circularity, durability, and sustainability. This refers to claims about the product’s durability lifetime, accessibility to affordable service and spare parts, resource efficiency, and other sustainability claims about the materials and resources. These claims are classified into four groups, Long lifetime, Accessible service and spare parts, Sustainable materials and life cycle, and Transparent information, abbreviated into L, A, S, and T, and integrated into a certified market competition platform called Certified to LAST.

Digitalization is key for an organization to achieve sustainability leadership, to be able to conform with sustainability objectives, support claims, and inform consumers and consecutive stakeholders. However, there is no impartial, credible, and universal market platform where market competition favors data exchange and traceability of products and materials. This paper addresses the question of how to utilize digital tools to meet the challenges at the interface between the producer and the consumer. The methodology of the study is action research, which includes various qualitative and quantitative research methods. The research results in the creation of an information system platform, which shows how to merge digital information with a product to provide credibility to consumers and support their purchasing decision based on the claimed lifetime of the product, the sustainability requirements met, how the consumer will find service and spare parts, as well as the design of a universal digital twin. This research contributes to the transparency and traceability aspects by showing how organizations can work and cooperate to create verifiable information and establish claims that support resource efficiency decisions, as well as demonstrating how a traceability system can facilitate the efficient use of materials and energy resources. © 2022 by the authors.

This report presents the concept data model for the digital twin of metal, from specification of metal product to definition of scrap yard, and from scrap yard to final metal product. The report leads the reader from the basic needs of data-based foundry production management system through logic steps to the model where all key concepts for the data model is presented.