Eco-Business by Dauvergne Peter;Lister Jane;

Author:Dauvergne, Peter;Lister, Jane; [Dauvergne, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 3339580
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Big brands are adopting certification to better control suppliers’ practices and to boost profitability. Chiquita’s partnership with the Rainforest Alliance in the 1990s to certify their banana crops, for example, introduced new practices to better protect local ecosystems that reportedly also increased farm productivity by 27 percent and reduced costs by 12 percent.17 Big-brand companies are also using certification as a way to establish “green credibility” and capture the growing demand for environmentally friendly products. The range of certification programs is increasing quickly, and many of these programs include eco-labeling options. To scale up these programs, companies are participating in initiatives (such as the Global Ecolabelling Network) that help to standardize life-cycle analysis methods and metrics and to verify and communicate the eco-friendly aspects of consumer brands.

Governments have well-established green label programs. The European Union’s standardized Eco-Flower logo and the US ENERGY STAR program are two global leaders. Since 2000 consumers have bought more than 3 billion products with an ENERGY STAR label. The amount of greenhouse-gas emissions avoided in 2010 alone, ENERGY STAR claims, is equal to taking 33 million cars off the road.

Third-party auditing, certification, and eco-labeling programs are not without their challenges and critics (e.g., with respect to consistency and fairness), and challenges and criticisms can present risks to big-brand companies. In response, big brands are launching a growing array of their own logos and labels (some legitimate and some not) to advertise and promote so-called sustainable products. In some cases, this is enabling brands to define and gain market control over the sustainability standards by which consumers will judge their products—for example, the definitions and expectations for recyclability, recycled content, organic, carbon neutral, and energy and water efficiency. Some retailers, including Tesco, are planning to go even further, aiming for product labels that will enable consumers to compare things like “carbon footprint” as easily as they can compare price or nutritional profile.18

The market, as a consequence, is becoming increasingly crowded with a confusing array of legitimate and illegitimate green claims and labels, which is leaving even loyal eco-brand buyers baffled. Although additional product information improves transparency, it can be difficult to interpret. Specifically, rating the most environmentally friendly product by calculating and weighing the tradeoffs among different attributes can be difficult, as the examples in table 4.2 show.

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