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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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Related Posts
ISO 14020 Series: 3 Types of Environmental Labels and Declarations
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Canadian Guidelines on Environmental Claims
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The Implications of ISO 50001 for Your Business
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