ISO 14020 Series: Three Types of Environmental Labels and Declarations

The ISO 14020 series (14020, 14021, 14024, 14025) is designed to assist businesses with measuring and communicating their efforts to minimize their environmental impacts.

ISO 14001 offer standards for environmental management systems.
ISO 14030 deals with issues of environmental performance evaluation, indicators, and reporting. The same information is sometimes required for environmental reports and for verification of environmental claims.

ISO 14040 series deals with the product life cycle; it covers the guiding principles of life cycle analysis, inventory, impact assessment, and interpretation, and provides some sample applications. Credible environmental labeling is dependent on an understanding of the life cycle of a product; consequently, the linkages between the 14020 series and 14040 standards are very important.

ISO and IEC guides are also available to help those developing technical standards to consider the environmental aspects of products. One such guide is ISO Guide 64.

Here is a brief review of ISO's three types of environmental labels:

Type I environmental labeling — Principles and proceduresEstablishes procedures to establish and operate a Type I, or eco-logo, program. Type I programs employ a third-party certification process to verify product or service compliance with a pre-selected set of criteria. Provides guidance on developing criteria, compliance, systems, and operating procedures for awarding eco-logos for third-party verifiers.

Type II environmental labeling — Self-declared environmental claims
Defines commonly used environmental claims, establishes use guidelines for the Mobius loop markings, and suggests methodologies for tests that can be used to verify these claims.

Type III environmental declarationsSpecifies a format for reporting quantifiable life cycle data (environmental loads, such as energy used, emissions generated, etc.) Describes business-to-business declarations and labels, which require independent verification of the data only, not third-party certification. Business-to-consumer declarations require third-party certification.
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ISO Principles for Environmental Labels and Claims

These principles are part of ISO 14020, they serve as a prerequisite for all the other standards in the series.

1. Environmental labels and declarations shall be accurate, verifiable, relevant, and not misleading.

2. Procedures and requirements for environmental labels and declarations shall not be prepared, adopted, or applied with a view to, or with the effect of, creating unnecessary obstacles to international trade.

3. Environmental labels and declarations shall be based on scientific methodology that is sufficiently thorough and comprehensive to support the claim and that produces results that are accurate and reproducible.

4. Information concerning the procedure, methodology, and any criteria used to support environmental labels and declarations shall be available and provided upon request to all interested parties.

5. The development of environmental labels and declarations shall take into consideration all relevant aspects of the life cycle of the product.

6. Environmental labels and declarations shall not inhibit innovation that maintains, or has the potential to improve, environmental performance.

7. Any administrative requirements of information demands related to environmental labels and declarations shall be limited to those necessary to establish conformance with applicable criteria and standards of the labels and declarations.

8. The process of developing environmental labels and declarations should include an open, participatory consultation with interested parties. Reasonable efforts should be made to achieve a consensus throughout the process.

9. Information on the environmental aspects of products and services relevant to an environmental label or declaration shall be available to purchasers and potential purchasers from the party making the environmental label or declaration.
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The History and Value of Environmental Labeling

Environmental labels have been around for more than a quarter century, yet their value rests on the assurance that the information provided is credible, objective, easily identifiable and understood by consumers.

The demand for environmental information on consumer products has been growing since the late 1970s. There are now many different approaches and systems for assessing and communicating environmental product information.

In 1992, the concept of environmental labeling was endorsed by participating governments at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) to "encourage expansion of environmental labeling and other environmentally related product information programs designed to assist consumers to make informed choices".

In 1993, ISO established a technical committee to develop international environmental labeling standards. These standards are intended to incorporate requirements for consistency and accuracy, and create fair competition in the marketplace. ISO 14020 series is part of a family of international environmental labeling standards.

Environmental labeling is based on international standards and is recognized as an effective instrument of environmental policy by the World Trade Organization (WTO) secretariat, (see WTO Web page on environmental labeling).

Standards play an important role in providing guidance to ensure responsible claims in industry and advertising.

Standards for environmental claims benefit consumers, industry, and advertisers by providing a level playing field and consistency of application. They also provide continual improvement through the maintenance of a standards program that is updated as environmental practices and scientific information evolve.

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Standards are Required to Combat Eco-label and Eco-Certification Confusion

With the plethora of competing green claims it is imperative that we develop industry specific standards. There are a wide range of eco-labels and eco-certification approaches, they include self-managed or third-party-managed: verified in-house or independently verified and/or certified; based on the product life cycle or a single attribute; available for single or multiple sectors and product categories; and designed to demonstrate environmental leadership, relative performance, or just provide information.

It is becoming increasingly important for consumers and institutional buyers to know if a product or service is truly green.

Producers use eco-labels and eco-certification to validate green claims, guide green purchasing, and improve environmental performance standards. According to a 2007 USDA report, eco-labels in organic food products and forestry practices have grown at 20-30% per year since the late 1990s and early 2000s.

A report titled Global Ecolabel Monitor 2010, Towards Transparency (PDF), was produced by Ecolabel Index, the largest global database of ecolabels, in collaboration with the World Resources Institute. The report provides a snapshot of eco-label transparency, including the results of a survey of 340 eco-labels from 42 countries, conducted between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010.

The report indicates that demand for products with eco-labels is growing, although confusion about which companies are truly environmentally responsible persists. A 2009 UK Carbon Trust study indicated that 44% of UK consumers want more information on what companies are doing to be green, but 70% do not feel confident about identifying which companies are environmentally responsible.

Several large companies and government agencies have recently announced or improved their green- or eco-purchasing policies, notably Wal-Mart, Office Depot, Mars, Dow, Dell and the US Federal Government. In order to meet their policies, these large-scale institutional purchasers need standards, detailed information, and proof that a product is green.

With differing criteria as to what constitutes green, eco-labels are lacking the credibility they require to be effective. According to a European market research study (OECD, 2006), marketing, consumer confusion and competition between similar schemes has caused low market penetration for some ecolabels.

Eco-labels and eco-certification can provide an effective baseline and encourage best practices and guidelines but only if we first develop industry specific standards.
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Green Science

Green science is very important to anyone who seeks to employ sustainable business practices. Although rarely explicitly communicated in an effective marketing message, scientific evidence must implicitly support Green marketing claims. By definition scientific investigation means that conclusions will always be subject to review. Therefore it is incumbent upon sustainable businesses owners to continually reevaluate their Green promises.

Atmospheric sciences, environmental chemistry, ecology, and geosciences have all contributed to the large and growing body of evidence. Taken as a whole the results confirm climate change, reductions in biodiversity, diminished water quality, soil contamination, resource depletion, and air pollution.

Those who try to dismiss the plethora of data ignore the facts. There are those who have funded environmental research as a stall tactic. Others argue that such things as climate change are part of a normal process citing the fact that we have experienced periods of global warming (and cooling) in the past. However it is a fact that our climate is warming faster as a consequence of human habitation. This should be obvious to even the most cynical scientist, taken as a whole the weight of the evidence is irrefutable. There is no simple panacea, but there is scientific consensus: Threats to our environment are real.

Marketing messages that pander to doubters may lose the attention of their core audience. There is adequate exposure to scientific evidence to discard the views of the politically motivated or intellectually questionable luddites who feel climate change is some kind of hoax. Effective Green marketing is often best when it implicitly incorporates sustainable attributes. Knowledge does not infer wisdom, but it is an important step on the road to intelligent stewardship. Scientific observation is an invaluable tool, what we do with it, is up to us.

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