Environmental Product Information & Ecolabels

There are similarities between environmental performance information and technical performance information but there are important differences. For example, environmental impacts arise throughout the life-cycle of a product or service, while purchasers seldom have the same depth of understanding of these complete life-cycles as they do of issues relating to product use. So simple formats - like product ratings - have some advantages for communication. On the other hand, providing simple ratings that apply to the contexts of most users is technically difficult - what use is a recyclable product if there are no recycling facilities? what use is durable furniture in a temporary building?

So companies need to choose a means of communication that works for its own customers, in their own contexts. But other stakeholders, like intermediaries or opinion-formers, need to be taken into account too. With many end-users unfamiliar with the use of environmental performance information, these 'translators' can be the more important audience.

Environmental Information Formats

There are numerous information formats available within the two main categories of self-declared environmental claims and standardised labelling schemes

The UK Government has made some attempt to control the quality of self-declared claims with its "Green Claims Code", while ISO has released guidance on the derivation of different sorts of environmental declaration:

  ISO 14020 setting out the general principles supporting environmental product information
  ISO 14024 - Type I on third-party labelling schemes
  ISO 14021 - Type II on self-made claims
  ISO 14025 - Type III on environmental declarations: quantitative LCA-backed claims.

Standardised labelling schemes

Standardised labelling schemes - often called eco-labels - have proliferated over the past few years, so that there are now seceral hundreds operating around the world. Suppliers wishing to use these can choose between a number of formats:

 Multiple-issue labels, such as the EU eco-label (the "Flower"), which look at the overall impacts of a product across its whole life-cycle. A label is only awarded to those products which meet (or exceed) the environmental criteria set by the labelling scheme. These award labels are Type I labels as per ISO 14024 and cover a wide variety of product categories.
 Eco-profiling schemes, which provide factual information in a standardised format: the environmental product declaration (EPD) or Type III declaration. EPDs are designed to facilitate inter-product comparison based on environmental criteria.
 Single-issue labels, often private labels operated by an interest group, in which a number of environmental and/or social or ethical standards must be met in order to satisfy an external assessment. There are numerous labelling schemes.
 Eco-rating schemes, under which products are awarded a rating, say on a scale of 'A' to 'G', based on their environmental performance. Most are single issue (for instance the EU energy label).

Many eco-label schemes are country-specific and some, such as the EU's energy-labelling scheme for white goods, mandatory.

As well as choosing the right environmental performance information to give to customers, you need to choose the right "vehicle" to get it to them. Environmental product declarations may be stand-alone brochures, or part of the technical spec. Signs and POS material might draw consumers' attention to particular attributes of certain products. Site- or company-level environmental reports are valuable in some situations, and one-to-one dialogue about environmental issues is critical in many industrial markets.

To use the environmental performance of your products or services as an effective marketing aid, EuGeos works with you to select an approach that gives your customers the information they need in formats they can use.

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