JFE Steel Corporation announced recently that steel bar and wire rod products manufactured at the company’s Sendai Works and the Kurashiki plant of its West Japan Works have newly received EcoLeaf certification from the Sustainable Management Promotion Organization (SuMPO) in Japan. The certifications, which involved third-party audits and verification of data provided by the company, will enable customers to quantitatively and objectively evaluate the lifecycle environmental impact of JFE Steel’s sustainable products.
EcoLeaf is a Type-III environmental product declaration (EPD) that complies with the ISO 14025:2006 standard, which defines the principles and procedures for quantitative disclosure of the environmental impacts of products and services, from raw material procurement to disposal and recycling.
JFE Steel’s certified steel bars and wire rods, which cover a wide range of products in various sizes, offer excellent surface quality suitable for use in automotive components. Customers can now use these products with even greater confidence and assurance thanks to the EcoLeaf certification of JFE Steel’s transparent environmental-impact disclosures.
The Japan Iron and Steel Federation, in an effort to support the EcoLeaf program, introduced its Product Category Rule2 (PCR) for calculating environmental impacts in August 2019. The PCR complies with the ISO 20915 and JIS Q 20915 standards, both of which take into account recycling capacity when determining quantitative environmental impact.
JFE Steel’s parent company JFE introduced its JFE Group Environmental Vision for 2050 as part of a broad-based initiative to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, under which JFE is actively expanding its groupwide initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions through eco-friendly products.