ENVIRONMENT-EU: Cultivating ‘Flower Power’ to Green Products

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Brian Kenety

BRUSSELS, Jan 10 2002 (IPS) - The European Commission Thursday adopted a new three-year working plan to promote its ‘eco-label’ scheme.

The scheme is designed to promote products with a reduced environmental impact within the European Union member states, as well as Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

The symbol of the scheme, a green flower with a Euro head and EU stars for petals, can be attached to products that meet strict ecological and performance criteria as a marketing tool “to demonstrate their superior environmental performance” to consumers.

“Consumers and public purchasers should be entitled to the best environmental performance, and that is assured by the eco-label,” said Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstroem, announcing plan which runs from 2002 to 2004.

“And manufacturers and retailers should be prepared to meet the increased demand from consumers for superior products,” she added.

The Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, acknowledges that to date, the eco-label scheme has proved to be something of a disappointment, having achieved less than satisfactory visibility on the market.

While many consumers will be familiar with ‘dolphin-safe’ tuna and look for ‘organically grown’ apples or ‘fair trade’ coffee, the EU’s flower is not as well known or understood.

Some environmentalists are critical of consumerism in general and argue that ‘green consumerism’ is a self-contradicting term, and that ‘green shopping’ will do little to bring about the more fundamental economic and social changes that are required to protect the planet.

Companies are also concerned about unfair competition and reluctant to rely on the assurance of an overseas eco-labelling programme that specific environmental criteria are being met.

At the same time, some companies may intentionally misrepresent their products as ‘environmentally friendly’ in order to bolster profits. This amounts to unfair competition for those companies that must spend the time and money to adhere to regulations.

On the other hand, ‘green’ criteria can be seen as a hidden trade barrier, designed to protect European goods or EU partners who have preferential treatment. On this basis, the United States banana exporter Chiquita, for example, pursued its own eco-label approach throughout the 1990s to counter any ‘green’ trade barriers the EU might try to impose in an effort to support banana imports from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations.

A number of eco-label schemes are currently up and running in Northern Europe. Some schemes are purely private, such as that sponsored in Sweden by TCO, the trade union of office workers. Others are government- backed, such as the German Blue Angel scheme, which is supported by the German Environment Protection Agency.

But even in the case of government-supported schemes, eco- labels are never mandatory, meaning they are neither a legal nor a market entry requirement.

Indeed, most eco-label schemes in Europe intentionally set out to cover only a small percent of the products in a particular market.

According to Wallstroem, the Commission’s new working plan sets out objectives for increased market penetration and promotion of the flower, for increasing the number of product groups to be brought within the scope of the scheme and for co-ordination and co-operation between the scheme and other eco-label award schemes in the EU member states.

To achieve maximum results, the Environment Commissioner is pushing for “support from other EU policy measures” and places increased emphasis on reinforcing and co-ordinating all the marketing efforts currently being made by the various consumer and environment non-governmental organisations (NGOs), trade unions, industry, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and other organisations within an umbrella group, the European Union Eco-labelling board (EUEB).

“The fundamental aim is to make the eco-label a more successful and effective instrument for improving the environmental quality of products and services, contribute to making consumption more sustainable and make the most effective use of the resources allocated to the scheme by the Commission, Member States and the interested parties,” said the Commission.

Ecological criteria have already been established for 17 major product groups under the scheme, including textiles and footwear, several detergent groups, several household appliances, several paper products, paints and varnishes and soil improves and growing media.

The working plan foresees aiming for a final figure of around 30 product groups for which ecological criteria should be established in the next three years. This should form a sufficiently complete range of products to attract retailers, manufacturers and consumers and which is also manageable in terms of the work necessary to establish and regularly revise their criteria.

The number of flower holders has doubled in the last year to 93 companies, in 13 of the 18 participating countries and in 12 out of 17 product groups.

The flower today represents several hundred products in a single market of more than 370 million consumers, with sales in 2000 of approximately 17 million eco-labelled articles.

The highest flower rates so far have been achieved in Denmark, Italy, Greece and Spain, where the Flower activities are linked to on- going national efforts on Integrated Product Policy.

The Commission said the flower eco-label, as one of the key instruments of Integrated Product Policy (IPP), has an important role in making consumption more sustainable. While traditionally environmental policy focused on production-related measures and end of pipe technologies, IPP is a relatively new area of environmental policy which looks at the whole life cycle of products from the natural resources from which they come, through their use and marketing, to their eventual disposal as waste, with the aim of reducing their environmental impacts.