Electrolux supports new EU energy label for vacuum cleaners

Electrolux welcomes the proposal from the European Commission on energy labelling of vacuum cleaners.

Electrolux recommends that the proposal, which is up for discussion and vote in the Ecodesign Regulatory Committee on 27 February 2013, is adopted in order for the energy label to be implemented without further delay.

“The proposed energy label will ensure transparency towards consumers and push the market towards more energy efficient and better performing vacuum cleaners, while the ecodesign rules will remove the least efficient products from the market”, writes Electrolux in a position statement to the European Union’s Member States.

“The proposed label will show the main characteristics of a vacuum cleaner – energy efficiency, cleaning performance and noise. Consumers will be able to easily compare the energy efficiency and cleaning performance of different products available in shops.”

“We support the proposed method to define energy efficiency. Only products with a low energy consumption can reach the better classes, while a good dust pick-up is also secured as it is included in the energy efficiency calculation and displayed on the label.”

Electrolux also makes three suggestions to improve the Commission proposal:

If Member States wish to make performance more visible to the consumer on the label, the size of the dust pick-up symbol could be increased.
If there is an interest to raise the ambition level Electrolux would suggest activating the top classes (A+, A++, A+++) on the energy label already from the start instead of one and three years later. This would further increase competition and speed up the change towards more efficient appliances.
Electrolux shares the view expressed by other stakeholders that the introduction of a durability requirement would be a significant step as no other appliance has such a requirement today. To increase the possibility for EU Member States to perform market surveillance, we propose setting the requirement at 300 hours instead of 500 hours (a requirement at 500 hours would take 21 days for one product to be tested at a compliance control).