Brexit should bring change to vacuum cleaner labelling

Justin Binks, director of SEBO UK, said that the current EU labelling is flawed and should be amended or scrapped for more sensible testing and labelling, post-Brexit.

Binks said that customers have been left “confused and frustrated” ever since the introduction of current energy efficiency and performance labelling of vacuum cleaners via EU legislation in 2014.

“Unfortunately, the present labelling regulations bear very little relationship to the use of vacuum cleaners in the real world and do not help when comparing how well one machine cleans compared to another,” Binks said.

Binks said that although manufacturers were required to score vacuum cleaners on how well they pick up dirt from carpets and hard floors with crevices, as well as dust emission and noise levels, ease of use is not part of the tests. He argued that there was no guarantee that an A-rated model would work the way a customer expected, and could actually end up being turned on for longer, using more energy.

“It is worth understanding that, under the current regulations, it is very hard for manufacturers to produce a vacuum cleaner that both performs well in the real world and achieves good ratings,” he said.

According to Binks, while most vacuum cleaners are employed to collect fluff, hair and fibre, the hard floor and carpet pick up tests instead require that a special type of sand be used. Furthermore, the cleaner’s ability to pick up dirt from crevices in hard floors, rather than their surface, is what is examined. The difference between domestic machines, which are used on average for 50 hours a year, compared to the ten hours a day of commercial machines, is also not taken into account, Binks argued.

"A post Brexit world leaves the government with the opportunity to kill the flawed EU label. This does not mean the idea of an energy label should be abandoned - far from it," he said.  

“A well-conceived energy label which is based on sensible testing on various types of hard floor and carpet, and which is not skewed towards continental-style models, must be a good thing,” Binks added. “Such a label should be useful, trusted and easily-understood so all customers can make appropriate choices when choosing a vacuum cleaner.”