The Palm Oil Roundtable has launched an ecolabel for palm oil. It’s industry led, voluntary, and Friends of the Earth is thinking about withdrawing support for it. The website is flashy, but the bottom line is it sounds like just the thing consumers and the planet don’t need.

Palm oil has long been a controversial product. On the one hand nations like Malaysia and Indonesia are working hard to develop, on the other hand they possess incredible natural resources and biodiversity. The booming palm oil industry is smack in the middle of that train wreck of perspectives.

We’re not against an eco-label for palm oil. Far from it, the more controversial the product, the more value a label can bring. Forestry is a classic example. The FSC did a tremendous job developing a legitimate source for green timber.

The problem is not standards, it’s how those standards are developed, monitored, and enforced.

A report referenced in the UK based Telegraph has called for an airplane based ecolabel to “inform passengers how much carbon their journey is producing, enabling them to make informed choices about how they travel.”

Would it be better to focus on carbon or look at the overall environmental footprint of the airline (would being organic make the food taste better)? While developing a carbon label might be the shortest path with the best impact, if the standard was capped with carbon customers might assume a low carbon airline is making its best total effort toward the planet.

Further, merely disclosing the amount of carbon would do little to inform consumers, most of whom are not carbon accountants. One solution could be a graded label, like the one used for energy consumption in Europe.

Another more difficult option used by many product ecolabels could be simply setting the highest standard feasible and raising the grade over time “good vs bad”. The Marine Stewardship Council and the Forest Stewardship Council follow this path. Their current challenge there is how to handle their brand in a rapidly changing industry.

Making those decisions would seem like an ideal job for the the International Air Transport Association (IATA) perhaps in partnership with the ISEAL Alliance, a group that promotes consistent ecolabel standards.

IATA’s environment section states that one of their goals is to develop industry positions on key environmental issues. So far they do not appear to have considered an ecolabel. Their homepage is covered in lovely green leaves though.

Travel news in brief – Telegraph

Earlier this week we wrote about USDA Organic nuking their brand in the NY Times. The Wall Street Journal article on FSC Mixed Sources including wood from Asia Pulp and Paper’s Indonesia moonscape is another example of brand dilution in response to market demand.

While FSC has since acted to strengthen its standards, the article notes competition in the labelling space coupled with demand may create a race to the bottom. Great. Added pain in the butt for people who have better things to do than eyeball logos when they’re buying new flooring. People are already paying a premium for a lot of this stuff. The least we can do is clearly answer the question “is this product better for the environment?”

So far we’ve seen labels damaging their own brands in response to their success. What we haven’t seen is a concerted global effort to establish baselines in this space. When demand rises because consumers are seeking an assurance of environmental quality the worst thing you can do is damage the credibility of that assurance.

Ben Cashore’s response to this article is right. A mixed sources label is a critical bridge to meet market demand. What they neglected to do is establish firm “no go” rules for certifiers. In other words: don’t ever certify a company who turns orangutan habitat into something that makes Canada’s tar sands look lush. Here’s a quick brainstorm of options to deal with increasing demand:

1. Establish clear baselines that prevent abuse of the label if it is going to be separated out into grades.

2. Launch a global campaign: “green timber market booming”. Interview companies who aren’t providing green forest products asking them why they don’t care to meet market demand, send letters to their shareholders about it.

3. Partner with venture capital firms to develop a eco-timber fund to enable companies to go green.

4. Partner with governments and government financial mechanisms to develop new supply chains in developing countries.

FSC has done a tremendous job developing market-based solutions for environmental problems. The WSJ article is a wake up call to all ecolabels, most of which aren’t as rigorous. Your label is your brand and your brand is your reputation. You’ll take it on the chin just as hard as Shell, The Gap, or Nike did if you get careless.

Take stock of the orangutans in your closet before the whole concept of ecolabelling suffers.

A few weeks ago, in “Nothing for cars?“, Jacob was wondering why we still hadn’t seen an ecolabelling scheme for cars — lots of stats and studies, but no comprehensive, consistent metric of which cars are out in front on environmental performance.

According to a recent article in the IHT (An environmental warning proposed for cars in Europe | 28 October 2007), the European Parliament recently proposed a plan whereby,
…20 percent of the space or time of any auto ad would have to be set aside for information on a car’s fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions
This would expand existing information required on emissions levels and fuel consumption – and it looks like carmakers and ad agencies are keen to put the brakes on it.

According to Chris Davies, a British MEP who sponsored the plan,
The rationale is to try to get carmakers to compete on environmental information about their cars, rather than purely on power, speed and appearance…”
Advertisers, on the other hand feel it would be a disincentive for auto makers to advertise, and therefore have impacts in other parts of the media economy.

For all the effort that goes into greening brands, and consumer’s demand for green purchasing information and options, we would have hoped for a more proactive stance — a client’s green credentials are increasingly an important part of the overall brand.

Making the provision of key environmental information mandatory — and consistent — can help to:

undermine greenwashing,
incentivise automakers on increasing efficiency and decreasing emissions,
satisfy consumer demand for disclosure of environmental information,
demonstrate responsibility on the part of advertisers and their agencies.

Buckle up — we expect a long and bumpy road before we get there.

We’ve been discussing how best to build naming conventions around the labels in this site. Particularly in the retail goods type this can be a challenge. Some labels have the country integrated into their name (Fair Flower Program Germany) others do not (Environmentally Friendly Label (Croatia)). Where the name is not in the title we decided to add it in brackets to make it easier for people using our site.

Here’s another pickle presented by Fairtrade, which seems caught between Fairtrade, Max Havelaar, and Transfair as well as between Mark and Label:

• Fairtrade Austria
• Max Havelaar Belgium
• Transfair Canada
• Max Havelaar Denmark
• Max Havelaar France
• TransFair Germany
• Fairtrade Foundation UK
• TransFair Italy
• Fairtrade Mark Ireland
• Fairtrade Label Japan

While we welcome diversity there are times when standardisation is useful. From a consumer and directory building perspective, we’re leaning toward the standards are useful end of the spectrum with regard to label names.