Green Purchasing—Environmental Certification-Labeling

Third Party Environmental Certification/Labeling

Environmental certification, labeling or standard setting organizations develop specifications or definitions for environmentally preferable products, and in most cases certify products that have met those standards. Using these organizations’ standards may be an efficient way for your facility to adopt environmental specifications without doing extensive product research yourselves. All certifying or labeling organizations provide lists of their certified products; some will work with purchasers to review products and determine if a specific product meets a purchaser’s particular criteria.

Third party certification provides assurance that a given product has been independently tested and found to meet a specific set of criteria that demonstrably reduce its negative environmental and health impacts. In addition, certification helps ensure that a product is as effective as its conventional counterparts, since certifying organizations assess performance data. And finally a good certification program has a system of repeat verification and factory inspection is in place to ensure continuing compliance.

Hospitals can use third party certifying organizations by:

• Adopting the detailed specifications developed by these organizations for their certification standards as contract specification language.
• Restricting purchases in specific product categories to products that have been certified/labeled by a specific organization.
• Working with a third party certifier to validate the claims of a vendor.

Potential drawbacks to using these systems include certification standards that do not fully reflect your organization’s concerns (in which case you may request certification plus some additional criteria of your own). Also some small or startup companies which may have excellent products may not be able to afford the cost of certification, or have simply not gone through the process yet.

The best certification systems will have an open process for development of standards that includes feedback from health and environmental experts as well as manufacturers and end users. The International Standards Organization (ISO) has developed quality standards for environmental labeling programs as part of its ISO 14000 series. A Labeling Organization will be able to tell you if it complies with the ISO 14000 requirements.

Some standard-setting organizations like Energy Star and the new Green Electronics Council establish standards that ensure compliant products are environmentally preferable, but do not label or certify products. Such systems often allow vendors to self-certify that they meet the specific criteria – in a recognized program that includes spot checks of compliance and other safeguards, this can be acceptable.

Before specifying a certification or label, investigate the standard it is based on and verify that it meets your organization’s goals. For example, if your primary concern is dioxin releases from paper manufacturing, you won’t want to specify paper certified by an organization whose standard is based solely on recycled content – you’ll want to look for a standard that also specifies chlorine-free processing.

You may also wish to review an organization’s ties to industry – some, though not all, industry organizations develop purported ‘green’ standards based more on marketing interests than on verifiable environmental improvements.

Consumers Union has developed a general ecolabeling website at http://www.eco-labels.org/home.cfm that reviews the basis for different labeling schemes and rates them as credible or lacking in substance. This may be a good first stop for checking any labeling claims made by vendors.

Credible Certifying/Labeling Organizations:

Canada Environmental Choice Program. The Canadian government has developed an environmental labeling program for a wide variety of products sold in Canada. Here you can check out their specifications and find out which products are certified. (Some of these standards are reciprocally recognized by Green Seal in the US, and vice versa.)

The Chlorine Free Paper Association certifies paper made without chlorine and lists chlorine-free products they have certified.

Eco-Rating International is a private third party certifier that focuses primarily on assessing and rating a company's environmental performance.

The Forest Stewardship Council has published criteria defining responsible forestry and accredits organizations that certify wood from responsibly managed forests.

The Global Ecolabeling Network (GEN) is a non-profit association of ecolabeling organizations from around the world. This page links to specifications of all their members.

Green Seal is a private, non-profit organization that sets environmental standards and awards their environmental label to products that meet their environmental criteria. Specifications and names of certified products are available on this website.

Scientific Certification Systems is a private third party certifier that will work with vendors and purchasers to certify environmental claims.