Product Lifecycle
Product stewardship is defined as the management of the safety, health and environmental aspects of a product throughout its lifecycle in an ethically responsible way, abiding to all relevant legislation and respecting best practice industry guidelines.
For fertilizers the product lifecycle covers:
- Sourcing or raw materials, intermediates, additives, coating materials and third party products
- Product development
- Manufacturing
- Storage
- Packaging and loading
- Transportation
- Marketing and sales
- Application and use
- Re-use, recycling and /or disposal of packaging materials and left-over products
The final stage of the lifecycle - the application and use of the product – is covered by Fertilizers Europe Nutrient Stewardship activities. Although the main focus of Fertilizers Europe’s Product Stewardship Program is on the product, it also deals with other topics related to safety, health and environment which are of importance for the membership of Fertilizers Europe. Security is such a topic, for which Fertilizers Europe has developed a set of operational standards to minimize the risk of theft and misuse of fertilizers.
Fertilizers Europe Product Stewardship Program is structured to follow the product lifecycle, i.e. from sourcing of raw materials, production, storage, transport and through to delivery and storage on the farm. The application and use of fertilizers are covered in Fertilizers Europe Nutrient Stewardship activities. Each step of the product lifecycle contains a number of product stewardship requirements. All member companies of Fertilizers Europe are expected to fulfill these requirements.
