For several years now, our team has been participating in the Green Products Roundtable, a multi-stakeholder group led by the Keystone Center aiming to improve clarity around green product claims.

On 31-March the forum released a proposed Preferred Practices for Organizational Credibility guide (PDF) for public comment. When completed, the guide will provide a simple road-map on how to safely make green claims. Interested parties can submit comments online here. The Roundtable intends to release a final version in December. The ecolabels section is divided into three categories, some of the key best-practices for each are:

1. Creating standards (development of criteria behind eco-labels)

a. Follow standard-setting codes (e.g. ISO, ANSI and ISEAL);
b. consider the life cycle impacts of products in creating criteria;
c. specify and control the ways that the labels and standards can be used; and
d. avoid developing duplicative standards to what already exists.

2. Issuing ecolabels (for programme managers who run the ecolabel every day)

a. Provide independent verification processes;
b. periodically conduct program performance measurement and program evaluation; and
c. regularly publish the governance system and list of certified entities in an accessible format.

3. Certifiers (for companies that certify entities have met a given ecolabel)

a. Be independent of categories 1 and 2;
b. have the technical ability to perform the verification;
c. be accredited by a relevant certifying standard;
d. monitor entities’ compliance with the standard over time; and
e. have dispute resolution mechanisms in place.

The guide also covers best practices for other relevant stakeholders including governments, retailers, product manufacturers, institutional and commercial buyers, NGOs and other interested stakeholders.

The UK Based Consultancy SustainAbility, one of the original thought leaders in the corporate responsibility slash environmental, social and governance arena, has released a white paper on ecolabels, trust and supply chains. The report is downloadable for free with registration, at the source link below.

The 11-page report is easily digestible and worth a read. It sets out a context, then examines trends and challenges facing ecolabels. We liked how the report integrates the broader sustainability supply chain and communications field, setting ecolabels up as a ‘keystone species’ within that space.

SustainAbility intends to examine some of the hard to crack issues ecolabels face including consumer trust and ecolabel performance.

We would be interested to understand, in particular, the trust issue within the context of institutional consumers (governments, companies, producers, etc.). Our experience is that ecolabels are increasingly used by professional purchasers at these institutions to ease friction around sustainability purchasing at scale. This in turn is driving spikes in demand for certified product, but also for transparency and accountability, as these purchasers are much more likely to dive deeper into a ecolabel’s operations than an individual consumer.

This links to the ecolabel performance issue, which as our feedback from ecolabels for our Global Ecolabel Monitor last year noted, is certainly a function of the operational capacity of the ecolabels themselves. We are interested to continue to explore ways that the broader community can work with ecolabels to enhance and diversify sources of funding, operational capacity improvements, and other things on their ‘wish-lists’ as part of seizing this opportunity to grow.

Source: Signed, Sealed… Delivered? Phase One | SustainAbility.

Today UL Environment announced (pdf) that they have acquired another ecolabel – this time indoor air quality standards run by GreenGuard Environmental Institute and associated testing labs AQS. This acquisition follows UL’s purchase last year of Canadian TerraChoice, the organisation running Ecologo.

GreenGuard are respected experts on indoor air quality, which can be complex to measure and certify given how many different sources contribute to a room’s overall air quality. The acquisition includes both GreenGuard (who run the standard and label) and the associated testing labs of Air Quality Sciences, Inc. (AQS) who have the testing labs.

Greenguard has two widely recognized product certifications relevant in the building industry: the basic Greenguard Indoor Air Quality, and more rigorous Greenguard Children and Schools. According to a press release from GreenGuard, the program has more than 10,000 certified products.

Clearly this is a valuable addition to the growing portfolio of UL Environment, and it will be interesting to follow how the brands and testing methods of each are aligned. We also wonder for both Ecologo and GreenGuard if their logos will show the UL stamp or if they will remain, on the surface at least, independent.