ISO standard will help purchasers by clarifying environmental labels

fonte: sito www.iso.org

Businesses can contribute to a more sustainable planet by purchasing goods and services that cause less stress on the environment. However over the last two decades, an increasing number of environmental labels have not always communicated verifiable and accurate information about their products.

In order to address this problem, ISO has published ISO 14025:2006, Environmental labels and declarations – Type III environmental declarations – Principles and procedures, which will benefit business to business communication, by enabling purchasers to make comparisons between products fulfilling the same function, and encourage improvement of environmental performance.

“ISO 14025 is expected to play a role in national and regional eco-label programmes, such as the European Union Integrated Product Policy and provides benchmarks to further develop environment product declarations (EPD). It will also serve as a building block and enable all-sized businesses to construct EPD information modules providing life cycle information “, said Stig Hirsbak, convenor of the working group that developed the standard.

ISO 14025 Type III environmental declarations provide quantified environmental information about products, using predetermined parameters based on the ISO life-cycle assessment series of standards. Additional environmental information, such as the impact on biodiversity, instructions and limits for efficient use, or hazard and risk assessment on human health and the environment, among others, is given where relevant.