turbo500
Well-known member
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">An article written by Mr. D for the Financial Times:</span>
A label is a quick informative point of navigation: the good from the bad, the old from the new, the organic from the not-quite-so-organic and the cheap from the pricey.
The EU loves labels. And I suppose, inevitably, I am about to be labelled “eurosceptic”, because I am deeply troubled by its forthcoming energy labelling for vacuum cleaners, a grading system which is unfair, unrealistic and – bluntly – unfathomable.
The eurocrats hope its label will guide people towards the most energy-efficient and best performing vacuum cleaners for sucking up dust, debris and Doritos from the floors of Parisian apartments, Ibizan villas and Bradford terraces.
The mission is laudable: 25 per cent of Europe’s energy consumption is by households. TVs, washing machines, fridges, coffee machines ... The list goes on. Vacuum cleaners too.
But an environmental label isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on unless the machine to which it sticks is efficiently engineered: better performance, fewer materials and less energy.
Otherwise, people simply carry on using energy-hungry machines and mistrust anything claiming to be energy efficient.
EU labelling systems are unscrupulously manipulated: loopholes found and regulation diluted. They become a box ticking exercise that benefits nobody.
Carmakers are known to test fuel efficiency with tape sealed door joints, disconnected batteries and disabled air conditioning – hardly representative of the proverbial journey from A to B, but all ‘fair game’ according to the EU’s rules.
The vacuum cleaner energy label is headed the same way – thanks to a cluster of traditional continental manufacturers unprepared or ill-equipped to innovate.
The EU regulators’ ‘fair game’ in this instance is a dust-free laboratory environment and a box-fresh, brand new vacuum cleaner with nothing to clean for testing against the label’s criteria.
The new label rewards manufacturers of outmoded bagged vacuums because, apparently, bags aren’t an environmental cost in the eyes of the regulators.
Maybe there are houses in Stuttgart where puffed up and puffed out dusty old vacuum bags are neatly stacked in kitchen cupboards (you know, just in case)? Or perhaps they are repurposed to level uneven Bierkeller tables in Gütersloh?
Clearly, according to the EU, any purpose other than discarding them for landfill. Why reward waste, let alone poor performance in the home?
You’d be forgiven for forgetting the performance problem with vacuum bags, because it’s been more than 20 years since the invention of bagless, cyclonic machines.
Vacuum bags are porous. As air is drawn into the machine, dust and dirt fill the bag. Yet all the air has to pass through the bag.
It’s a fundamentally flawed design because the bag’s pores quickly clog with the dust it is trying to capture, restricting the air so the machine rapidly loses suction.
As it decreases, energy usage increases. And that’s precisely what you want a vacuum for – its suction.
Vacuum bags linger in landfill or are burnt – especially the newer plastic ones. The machines in which they wheeze and gasp are prematurely consigned to the scrap heap too. Bags harm the environment and are expensive.
Instead the EU kowtows to industrial heavyweights. Industry and government should work together, but regulation is best when it allows invention to flourish.
The EU must throw down the gauntlet to engineers rather than accommodate the status quo. I’m thinking less contravention of cucumber curvature regulations or the packaging of olive oil bottles, and more the kind of legislation that rewards and inspires those who innovate.
Sometimes industry will drag its feet – in which case politicians will need to be bold and show determination. But engineers must fight their corner too.
Turning the lights out on incandescent lightbulbs has been a bumpy ride, but the EU decisively backed new technologies. It has opened up a race for engineers to develop ever more efficient Compact Fluorescent Lamps and LED lighting and has spurred a wave of R&D that might not otherwise have happened.
Badges, labels and brands: it’s all about conformity and majority rule. Conformity does not spur inventiveness.
Inventiveness – and therefore progress – is stifled when systematic.
Brussels, by all means set challenges and parameters, but please do not create sustainability legislation that rewards sustained mediocrity and waste.
-------------------------------------------
Dyson is taking the EU to judicial review at the European courts over the legislation, which becomes compulsory from September
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3d51d42-ecce-11e3-a57e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz35HMwpta0
A label is a quick informative point of navigation: the good from the bad, the old from the new, the organic from the not-quite-so-organic and the cheap from the pricey.
The EU loves labels. And I suppose, inevitably, I am about to be labelled “eurosceptic”, because I am deeply troubled by its forthcoming energy labelling for vacuum cleaners, a grading system which is unfair, unrealistic and – bluntly – unfathomable.
The eurocrats hope its label will guide people towards the most energy-efficient and best performing vacuum cleaners for sucking up dust, debris and Doritos from the floors of Parisian apartments, Ibizan villas and Bradford terraces.
The mission is laudable: 25 per cent of Europe’s energy consumption is by households. TVs, washing machines, fridges, coffee machines ... The list goes on. Vacuum cleaners too.
But an environmental label isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on unless the machine to which it sticks is efficiently engineered: better performance, fewer materials and less energy.
Otherwise, people simply carry on using energy-hungry machines and mistrust anything claiming to be energy efficient.
EU labelling systems are unscrupulously manipulated: loopholes found and regulation diluted. They become a box ticking exercise that benefits nobody.
Carmakers are known to test fuel efficiency with tape sealed door joints, disconnected batteries and disabled air conditioning – hardly representative of the proverbial journey from A to B, but all ‘fair game’ according to the EU’s rules.
The vacuum cleaner energy label is headed the same way – thanks to a cluster of traditional continental manufacturers unprepared or ill-equipped to innovate.
The EU regulators’ ‘fair game’ in this instance is a dust-free laboratory environment and a box-fresh, brand new vacuum cleaner with nothing to clean for testing against the label’s criteria.
The new label rewards manufacturers of outmoded bagged vacuums because, apparently, bags aren’t an environmental cost in the eyes of the regulators.
Maybe there are houses in Stuttgart where puffed up and puffed out dusty old vacuum bags are neatly stacked in kitchen cupboards (you know, just in case)? Or perhaps they are repurposed to level uneven Bierkeller tables in Gütersloh?
Clearly, according to the EU, any purpose other than discarding them for landfill. Why reward waste, let alone poor performance in the home?
You’d be forgiven for forgetting the performance problem with vacuum bags, because it’s been more than 20 years since the invention of bagless, cyclonic machines.
Vacuum bags are porous. As air is drawn into the machine, dust and dirt fill the bag. Yet all the air has to pass through the bag.
It’s a fundamentally flawed design because the bag’s pores quickly clog with the dust it is trying to capture, restricting the air so the machine rapidly loses suction.
As it decreases, energy usage increases. And that’s precisely what you want a vacuum for – its suction.
Vacuum bags linger in landfill or are burnt – especially the newer plastic ones. The machines in which they wheeze and gasp are prematurely consigned to the scrap heap too. Bags harm the environment and are expensive.
Instead the EU kowtows to industrial heavyweights. Industry and government should work together, but regulation is best when it allows invention to flourish.
The EU must throw down the gauntlet to engineers rather than accommodate the status quo. I’m thinking less contravention of cucumber curvature regulations or the packaging of olive oil bottles, and more the kind of legislation that rewards and inspires those who innovate.
Sometimes industry will drag its feet – in which case politicians will need to be bold and show determination. But engineers must fight their corner too.
Turning the lights out on incandescent lightbulbs has been a bumpy ride, but the EU decisively backed new technologies. It has opened up a race for engineers to develop ever more efficient Compact Fluorescent Lamps and LED lighting and has spurred a wave of R&D that might not otherwise have happened.
Badges, labels and brands: it’s all about conformity and majority rule. Conformity does not spur inventiveness.
Inventiveness – and therefore progress – is stifled when systematic.
Brussels, by all means set challenges and parameters, but please do not create sustainability legislation that rewards sustained mediocrity and waste.
-------------------------------------------
Dyson is taking the EU to judicial review at the European courts over the legislation, which becomes compulsory from September
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3d51d42-ecce-11e3-a57e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz35HMwpta0
and bags can and do mean little to no loss of suction, HEPA filtration, easy dust disposal. Bags can be made cheap or even part of the cleaners costs. 
