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.
____________________________________