European Product En vironmental F ootprint PEF The PEF pr oject is important because ac c ording to the E u r opean C ommission pr oposals Cir cular E c onom y should be the backbone of the futur e EU industrial strategy and Life C y cle Assessment of pr oducts should be the norm Ther e is a r elativ ely high public support for dev elopment of new policies that unc o v er and c ommunicate en vir on mental performanc e of pr oducts and supply chains During the 2013 2017 piloting phase the E ur opean C om mission changed its r ec ommended Pr oduct En vir onment F ootprint PEF to tak e better ac c ount of the E arth s full po tential as a natural stock of metals and minerals The C om mission r ec ognised that such r esour c es ar e not nec essar ily depleted onc e extracted and to r eflect this c ommitted to dev eloping a new impact assessment model based on r esour c e dissipation With that in mind E ur omines and sev eral ICMM member associations work ed with the Danish T echnical Univ ersity and Quantis GmbH thr oughout 2019 to deliv er a fully im plementable dissipationbased method by the end of 2020 T owards the end of the 2019 the E ur opean C ommission Joint Resear ch C entr e JRC published its own implemen tation ideas on the same topic The pr ogr ess of both these pr ojects has been c onsistent with the findings of the EIT SUPRIM pr oject see abo v e though the JRC s pr eliminary pr oposal is significantly mor e c omplicated to apply In the meantime E ur omines maintains the view that the PEF methodology needs to be further dev eloped befor e it can be used for decision making and that the E ur opean C ommission needs to work with stak eholders to r evise its curr ent shortc omings and mak e sur e that the methodolo gy will be sufficiently r obust C ase studies b y E uromines member c ompanies ha v e demonstrated the potential for the SUPRIM method to better inform en vironmental performanc e of products and inc entivise changes in the supply chain EIT SUPRIM 2019 Whereas current PEF rules determine that c opper mines extract c opper 100 of depletion impact dissipation methods highlight opportunities to impro v e resourc e efficiency at c opper mines eg indicating potential losses of platinum cadmium or silv er that are worth in v estigating further Table of Contents page 22 of 35 S ustainabi li ty and Competi ti veness Copper Gold Platinum Cadmium Palladium Silver Molybdenum Others C opper 100 F r om D e p l e t i on F r om N o R e s pon s e 12 34 14 11 10 8 3 3 3 2 T o I na c c e ss i b i l i t y T o o p t i o n s f o r R e s o u r c e E f f c i e n c y Platinum Cadmium Silver Sulfate Copper Molybdenum Selenium Carbon dioxide Sulfur dioxide