Environmental product indicators and benchmarks in the context of environmental labels and declarations

ANEC commissioned the Öko-Institut e.V. to conduct a research study on various issues related to environmental labels and declarations which are of particular relevance to the consumers. The issues involve: (a) the usefulness of life cycle assessment methodology for product labelling schemes, (b) feasibility of aggregation approaches, such as EcoGrade and Eco-indicator, for assessing the environmental performance of products, (c) inclusion of qualitative indicators not covered by the LCA methodology, (d) the advantages and disadvantages of energy versus CO2-indicators, and (e) quality benchmarks for environmental data sheets. The purpose of the research will be to support ANEC and its member organisations in their position finding processes and to enable them to shape the upcoming discussion processes on these issues.