Eco Labels
www.eco-lbel.org.uk
 
Home
Labels
Organisations
How it Works
News
Comments
Contact
eco label Environmental Consultants
 
 
 
 
   
 

 

Types of Eco Label

The Carbon Trust: UK. More Info

A carbon label such as this one will tell you the embodied carbon associated with a given unit of the product you are buying.
FSC Logo FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council): International More Info

You may find this tree shaped logo on paper or wood products.
msc fish
MSC (Marine Stewardship Council)
Ensures the sustainability of fish stocks, fish with depleted stocks are removed from the MSC "list" and put back on when their stocks recover.

Which supermarket has the most MSC labels?
recrcle
Recycle
: Probably one of the most vague and confusing green labels there is, and has also been around the longest. The label pictured actually tells you why it beers the symbol, most don't. Finally though the UK has decided to revamp it labelling scheme in to three categories.

Read More.

   
epd label
EPD
(Environmental Product Declaration): A European Labelling System - "The international EPD® system has the ambition to help and support organisations to communicate the environmental performance of their products (goods and services) in a credible and understandable way."

This Label has much lower certification costs than the Carbon Trusts Label. But as you can see is not quantitative, the logo is backed up by a PRC (Product Category Rules) which are a report of the efforts being made to "green" the product, for instance switching to an organic ink for label printing etc. For an example PRC Click Here

EPD website: http://www.environdec.com/
eoro flower The European Union Ecolabel - also known as the Flower - is a flower symbol which can be used by goods and services which have a lighter environmental footprint than similar products performing the same function.

There is a good body of eco label legislation to support the eco flower label, more info here

Again this is an un quantitative label. It is featured highly on the DEFRA website, and has become quite successful in the UK.
   
 
seedling label The Seedling Label - Shows that the plastic used in a products packaging is bio degradable, the packaging can be made from vegetable based products (maze starch, wood pulp), or from fossil fuels. Sainsbury's, uses the most bio-plastic.
 Tesco Nurture Label Logo Nurture - Since its launch, 15,000 growers across 70 countries have become part of this programme, which focuses on good agricultural practice. Nurture is committed to producing top-quality fruit and vegetables, and supporting environment-friendly production by reducing energy usage, rationalising use of pesticides, recycling and improving efficiency.

The Nurture label goes along way to address the problems associated with sustainability in Tesco's supply chain.

The Carbon trust have released a quantitative, labelling system, which looks at the Life Cycle (for more info look at LCA on Wikipedia) of a product and numerically displays the carbon used to produce each unit, whether it be a jar of curry paste or an apple.

These websites list further examples:

National Green Labelling Programmes

Big List of Eco Labels