Consumer Products: The European Ecolabel
A short history and key documents
The Regulation
The European "eco-label award scheme" was agreed by environment ministers in December 1991, and set up under Council Regulation (EEC) 880/92 of 23 March 1992 (available from the European Commission). It came into force in October 1992.
The Regulation was revised in 2000, and extended to cover services. The European Commission is planning further major changes, to come into effect around 2009. More information is available on the Commission website.
Ecolabelling in the UK
The UK's deliberations about plans to set up an ecolabelling scheme are described in full in the House of Commons Environment Committee's Eighth Report in 1991, "Eco-Labelling", published by HMSO.
EU Regulations have direct effect in UK law, without further statutory action. The Ecolabel Regulations required member states to set up Competent Bodies to administer the European scheme (although actual participation by businesses in the scheme is voluntary). In 1992 the Government created the UK Ecolabelling Board (UKEB) to carry out this role, sponsored by the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR).
UKEB ran and promoted the scheme from 1992 until 1998. By then it was being realised that ecolabelling could not on its own transform the environmental behaviour of industry and consumers in the way that had been expected when the scheme was set up. A 1998 review of UKEB concluded that the Competent Body function should be taken over by the Secretary of State while the UK developed a new strategy and measures to help consumers to identify and choose products which did less harm to the environment.
In 1998 the Government announced in an official statement that it accepted these recommendations. DETR wound up UKEB, and took over the role of Ecolabel Competent Body with new staff in 1999.
In the UK, the Ecolabel scheme is currently directed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which replaced DETR in 2001. As UK Competent Body, Defra runs the scheme in partnership with TUV NEL Ltd. (TUV NEL Ltd work under contract to AEA Energy and Environment, who are in turn contracted to Defra to provide expert advice on product-related matters, and previously also provided expert scientific advice to UKEB and Defra about the scheme.)
The Ecolabel is continuing to grow in the UK, reflecting demand by retailers and industry for meaningful green credentials for their products, and helped by promotional initiatives designed to raise awareness of environmental labelling, such as Defra’s Shopper’s Guide to Green Labels.
The wider context
In August 1999 the Government set out its thinking on the Ecolabel and other product-related issues in its response to a report from the Environment Select Committee.
This was followed by the setting up of an Advisory Committee on Consumer Products and the Environment (ACCPE). ACCPE recommended that the Government should formally adopt a procurement policy giving preference in certain circumstances to products which met the highest energy labelling standards or ecolabelling criteria, and that this approach should be promoted across the rest of the public sector. It also recommended against setting up a national ecolabelling scheme in the UK.
In the UK, work on the environmental impact of products should be seen in the context of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy, which was updated in 2005 and published as Securing the Future.
At national and European level, these issues form part of ongoing work on Integrated Product Policy (IPP), which recognises that all goods and services affect the environment in some way, and tries to address this by examining all phases of the life-cycle of products, and relating policies to other sustainable development strategies. The European Commission’s IPP website provides more information and detailed studies about IPP and life-cycle issues.
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Page last modified: 9 October 2007