The overseas experience

Forest and Bird, Volume 22, Issue 2, 1 May 1991, Page 48

The overseas experience

HE FIRST ever environmental labelling scheme was devised by West Germany in the mid-1970s. Nowadays, Blue Angel is rather unsophisticated compared to other schemes because it does not take an holistic approach to the environmental costs of products, but nevertheless it introduced the world to the idea of ecolabelling and today 3000 products carry the logo. The difference between Blue Angel and the Canadian’s newer "green" scheme is that the latter covers a wider range of impacts. Therefore, if a company manufactured a silent lawnmower, for instance, it might receive the Blue Angel label because it reduces noise pollution, but if it was also energy inefficient it would not receive the "green’’ seal of

approval in Canada. Meanwhile the Japanese have a different system altogether. They divide products into separate categories for different labelling purposes. One label, for example, tells consumers a product causes minimal environmental damage when used while another might say the same thing about its disposal. The logo also comes with a brief explanation of why the product has been approved. Japan has now issued 850 labels covering 31 product groups. Sweden, Norway, Finland and Austria have plans to introduce labelling in the near future. Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Australia and the European Community Commission are all studying the idea. yf