Sustainable products are those products that provide environmental, social and economic benefits while protecting public health and environment over their whole life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials until the final disposal.
Scope of definition
According to Belz, Frank-Martin., the definition of sustainable product has six characteristics: Customer satisfaction: any products or services that do not meet customer needs will not survive in the market in a long term. Dual focus: compared with purely environmental products, sustainable products focus both on ecological and social significance. Life-cycle orientation: sustainable products are environmentally-friendly throughout their entire life. That is, from the moment the raw materials are extracted to the moment the final product is disposed of, there must be no permanent damage to the environment. Significant improvements: sustainable products contribute to dealing with socio-ecological problems on a global level, or provide measurable improvements in socio-ecological product performance. Continuous improvement: as the state of knowledge, technologies and societal expectation continually develop, sustainable products should also continuously improve with regard to social and environmental variation. Competing offers: sustainable products may still lag behind competing offers, therefore, the competing offers may serve as a benchmark regarding social and ecological performance.
Michael Braungart and William McDonough's book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things expands on the life-cycle part of this definition. They suggest that every material and product should be made in a manner that when its useful life is over, all the materials of which it is made can be returned to the Earth after composting, or endlessly recycled as raw materials.
Product information
Product information can enable, facilitate, require or support consumers or other buyers and importers to identify sustainable products or sustainability of products. Sustainability standards and certifications are used for this purpose:
Sustainable product standards
Sustainability standards also known as Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are private standards that require products to meet specific economic, social or environmental sustainability metrics. The requirements can refer to product quality or attributes, but also to production and processing methods, as well as transportation. VSS are mostly designed and marketed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or private firms and they are adopted by actors up and down the value chain, from farmers to retailers. Certifications and labels are used to signal the successful implementation of a VSS. Over the last decades, these standards have emerged as new tools to address key sustainability challenges such as biodiversity, climate change, and human rights. They standards cover a wide range of sectors such as agriculture, fishery, forestry, energy, textile and others. According to the ITC standards map the mostly covered products by standards are agricultural products, followed by consumer products.
Overall standards
Nordic Swan Ecolabel
The standard of Nordic Swan Ecolabel, which is distributed in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, mainly refers to distinguished products that have a positive effect on the environment. More likely, however, it has climate requirements that limit the amount of emissions where it is most relevant. More than 3,000 products, predominantly household chemicals, paper products, office machinery and building materials have been issued with this label. The criteria account environmental factors through the product's life cycle (raw material extraction, production and distribution, use and refuse). Thus the most important parameters are consumption of natural resources and energy, emissions into air, water and soil, generation of waste and noise.
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
GRI frames out and disseminates global sustainability reporting guidelines for ‘voluntary use by organizations reporting on the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of their activities, products and services’. According to GRI Guidelines, reporting bodies should take into consideration stakeholders’ interests and use the social indicators and others that more accurately depict the social and ecological performance of the organization.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)