FAQ
Frequently Asked
Questions
COMPANY
The VIVA project is open to all Italian wineries that want to measure and improve their sustainability performance.
To participate in the VIVA Program, the interested winery must request the signature of a Voluntary Agreement from the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security which establishes participation in the Program itself. Please click here to consult the procedures.
There are no membership fees, the signature of the voluntary agreement is for free.
Following the agreement signature, the company will be required: to carry out the assessment of VIVA indicators independently, (if you have the necessary skills within the company) or hiring external consultants;
to validate the results through an independent third-party certification body in order to publish them.
To summarize: the only costs are related to the assessment and to the certification procedure.
Here is an estimate of the potential indirect costs.
No, the VIVA Protocol is applicable to all companies (conventional farming, integrated farming, organic farming, biodynamic farming). The sustainability aspects crossing all technologies used in the company are evaluated as a whole.
Yes, VIVA member companies that have an ACA certificate of conformity or SQNPI certifications (with compliance covering at least 50% of the vineyards of the organization/product under analysis) apply the indicators Vineyard easy and Territory easy. These indicators are simplified, as the company already fulfills the ACA or SQNPI certified aspects by default. As far as the Vigneto easy indicator is concerned, it lacks the Defense and Fertilizer sub-indicators; on the other hand, the Territory easy indicator does not contain requirements that overlap with the provisions of SNQPI shown by the SQNPI conformity certificate and / or the SQNPI certification (RB5, RB14, RS28, RE36 are excluded only for companies with SQNPI certification and not for those with ACA compliance, while RB1, RB4 are considered already satisfied only under certain circumstances).
The advantages of applying both standards are multiple: from a production point of view they go from a reduction in production costs to a greater knowledge of the impacts, from which a rationalization of the production system arises. The integration of the two standards, from the application perspective, allows the company to evaluate with VIVA the environmental, social and economic impacts, while SQNPI guides the good practices both in the field and cellar. The contents of SQNPI can be implemented by companies that apply VIVA as good practices or mitigation measures, programmed through the preparation of the improvement plans specific for each of the indicators. On the other hand, the VIVA indicators represent a system for measuring sustainability performance for wineries and they are also an excellent tool for self-monitoring and monitoring the improvements over time.
Participation in the Program may be communicated with a press release shared between the company and the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, on information material and on the company website.
The company, for each indicator, can contact by email the contact persons indicated on the individual indicator pages, which can be reached here.
The VIVA online application allows the uploading of several external data: the Field Notebook, soil maps, plots, and weather data. Field data (e.g., agricultural practices, weather data survey, plant protection product uses) are usually recorded on farms in electronic documents called Field Notebooks. For this reason, the web application has a specific feature that allows importing some of the most common formats of Field Notebooks (Vite.net and Imageline), in which case the user does not have to change the upload format from these software because they are already compatible with VIVA. In addition, any Field Notebook can be imported as long as its data is adapted and formatted as per the VIVA template that can be downloaded from the website.
VIVA Program
AIR requires skills related to the assessment of Greenhouse Gases Inventory and Carbon Footprint Analysis of the product.
WATER requires agricultural skills related to the evaluation of evapotranspiration.
VINEYARD requires agronomic expertise.
TERRITORY requires expertise in the company activities.
There is not a procedure for the validation of the consultants, but the Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition suggests to contact the consultants that have taken the training course “VIVA Sustainable Wine – the procedures for the application, verification and communication” and the following updates. It is also specified that the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security does not have preferential relationships with any consultant/consulting company nor does it grant specific mandates.
Yes, you can find the updated list here: Validators.
No, the objective of the VIVA Program and the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security is to measure sustainability and make it objective in the judgment of citizens. For this reason, the project harmonizes the environmental indicators widely used at national and international level, providing in this way the guidelines for their application on the national territory.
The Regulation for the implementation of the voluntary national scheme for the assessment and communication of the environmental footprint of products, called Made Green in Italy, as per Art. 21, paragraph 1 of the Law 221/2015 expects the use of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology for the determination of the environmental footprint of products which was defined in the Recommendation 2013/179 / EU of the European Commission of 9 April 2013 and created to counteract the proliferation of methods for assessing the environmental impact of products.
The PEF methodology and the one used in the national program VIVA -Sustainability in Italian Viticulture, are not at all in contrast and in the future, if deemed appropriate, they could be easily integrated. The Ministry of the Environment, promoter of both the Made Green in Italy scheme and the VIVA Program, has already conducted, with the collaboration of ENEA, a preliminary study to compare the two methodologies.
Going a little more in detail, PEF is based on the principles of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which allows to evaluate the sustainability of a product, throughout its life cycle, with reference to 16 environmental impact categories, meanwhile it considers other aspects related to sustainability (social, economic and cultural) as additional requirements.
The VIVA program already adopts the LCA method for the calculation of the indicator Air which is based on the impact category “climate change” and the program includes three other indicators: Water, Vineyard and Territory. The water footprint, calculated in VIVA with the indicator Water, similar to the “Water Scarcity” indicator of the PEF, and the innovative indicators Vineyard and Territory already considered as examples on European scale, analyze aspects that the PEF only considers as additional requirements such as: quality of landscape, environmental quality of products, social sustainability. The latter aspects are of the highest value with regard to Italian productions, synonymous with excellence, quality and safety of products.
Concluding, with regard to the environmental impacts, the alignment between the VIVA methodology and the PEF one will not require companies to undertake additional efforts in terms of data collection and costs, while referring to additional requirements and aspects of communication of sustainability, where for PEF there are still ongoing trials, VIVA is already ahead and has as a matter of fact been taken several times as an example in the European tables.
Yes, if companies that use them have joined VIVA.
Yes, the AIR indicator refers to:
- ISO 14067: 2018 Greenhouse gases – Climate footprint of products – Requirements and guidance for quantification
- ISO 14064.1:2018 Greenhouse gases – Part 1: Specifications and guidance, at the organization level, for the quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and their removal
and subsequent updates.
The WATER indicator refers to UNI EN ISO 14046. The VINEYARD indicator was structured taking into consideration the Directive 2009/128/EC on the sustainable use of plant protection products and the guidelines set forth by the O.I.V. defined by CST Guide 1-2008.
The TERRITORY indicator takes as a reference the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines GRI G 3.1.
VIVA sustainability indicators are constantly updated, in accordance with the development of European and international standards (e.g. PEF – Product Environmental Footprint and the latest updating of ISO 14046 standard on Water Footprint calculation method). It is important to remember that these methods don’t examine social and economic impacts, as VIVA program does, that are essential elements of our program.
Yes, only after the product analysis and certification have been carried out.
VIVA AIR, VINEYARD and WATER don’t provide for benchmarks at national level. Because of the varied features of Italian territory, benchmarks are employed at regional level, where specific territorial programs utilize VIVA as an environmental performance measurement system, recognized by a scientific committee. This is the case of SOStain, project which includes VIVA among the minimum sustainability criteria, along with restrictions on permitted treatments, sulphites limits in wines, vineyards mandatory grassing over (during winter), employment of energy saving technologies, bottle weight limits, use of local resources, quantitative analysis of biodiversity, employment of eco-compatible materials, clear communication, use of VIVA calculation models.
TERRITORY indicator is itself a benchmark: a firm has to meet all the requirements of the indicator to receive VIVA
certification.
CERTIFICATION AND LABELS
No, but if the procedure for the certification is not carried out, the company will be not allowed to communicate to the public its results, neither to apply the label on the product. The company will be allowed to communicate only its participation to the program.
Wine market constitutes monopoly, especially in some countries. It is the reason why we have contacts with SAQ project managers, Canada-Québec state monopoly and with Systembolaget, the monopoly for the sale of wines and spirits in Sweden (they came and visited several firms joining VIVA program in August 2017). In order to recognize the validity of VIVA certification abroad, a letter of intent has been signed together with Foreign Trade Association (FTA), Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI)- Tuko, Logistics, Kesko, Systembolaget, Dansk Supermarkt, El Corte Inglés, Aldi Nord, ALKO, Vinmonopolet, REWE and METRO. Our target is to let VIVA Program become a rewarding criterion as regards the choice of suppliers. .. ..
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Yes, it does through the study and assessment of good practices for the protection and enhancement of indigenous species and it is both an evaluative and educational method. This kind of analysis includes the assessment of natural habitats, of green and wooded areas and it allows to promote and safeguard biodiversity on the whole, avoiding the screening of single species that would not be exhaustive because of the great heterogeneity of flora and fauna of different areas.
Yes it does, thanks to the VIVA indicators, Water (ACQUA), Vineyard (VIGNETO) and Air (ARIA), with the certification of organization it is possible to monitor the company’s environmental impacts. Meanwhile Territory (TERRITORIO), an indicator born from a work of synthesis of the ISO 26000 on Corporate Social Responsibility and Global Reporting Index (which in fact, guides the report on sustainability), represents a practical tool for analyzing the company’s environmental impact on a qualitative level and social and economic impacts on the territory in which it is located. The Territory report can also be used as a basis for the preparation of the sustainability report, together with the data obtained by the calculation of the other indicators.
Yes, the 2030 Agenda sets specific sustainable development goals, to which the VIVA indicators are aligned. Among the objectives of Agenda 2030, those that refer the most to the social and economic sustainability aspects investigated by VIVA with the indicator of Territory are the objectives 4 – Quality education, 5 – Gender equality, 6 – Access to water, 8 – Labor and economic growth, 12 – Sustainable consumption and 15 – Protection of biodiversity; objectives 6 and 14 – Protection of the sea, for Water; and the objective 13 – Stop climate change for the Air indicator.
The VIVA certification therefore allows to become aware of and account for the topics highlighted by Agenda 2030.
In the case of a
“product analysis”:
- The Ministry for the Environment releases a VIVA “product label”, which can be applied directly on the product.
In the case of a “company analysis”:
- The Ministry for the Environment releases a VIVA “company label”, which can be used on the company website or on company information materials. This kind of label cannot be applied directly to individual products.
Yes, the label can be used by the company for two years starting from the date of certification. Then it will be necessary to renew the evaluation and certification.
Yes, the company, after the certification, can decide to use the VIVA label on the product analyzed. The VIVA label has a QR code through which is possible to connect to a dedicated website (www.viticolturasostenibile.org) which explains the project and its objectives, and gives the possibility to verify the sustainability parameters of the chosen wine.
No, a comparison between the results of different companies or products is not possible. The only comparison that can be done is on the product or company performance over time.
Yes, it is. VIVA label for the international market, as the label addressed to the national market, is automatically generated by VIVA online software, once the Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea has confirmed the certification. The name of the project “VIVA Sustainability and Culture” (in English) is written on the label which can be accompanied by a QR code as well. The use of VIVA label for the international market is forbidden in Italy, but a firm is allowed to employ VIVA label for the national market abroad, in accordance with the laws of the country in which the product is exported.
A review of the tools and processes used to increase efficiency and international credibility is conducted, periodically, by a Scientific Committee.
Yes, it will be possible to display the VIVA Program logo on the label of company products intended for the national market together with the program website and the words: “name of the company is VIVA certified – Sustainability in Vitiviniculture in Italy – program promoted by the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security”, while on products destined for the international market “name of the company is certified VIVA – Sustainability in the Italian wine sector – Program promoted by the Italian Ministry of Environment and Energy Security.
Following the analysis, the company will receive the VIVA Organization label which can be used on the site, on information material relating to the company, on secondary packaging or can be displayed in the company. This kind of label cannot be applied directly to individual products. Le regole per la comunicazione per la certificazione di organizzazione sono riportate nel Disciplinare VIVA di Etichetta di Organizzazione.
