Visioning Sustainability for Change, Criteria for Effective Eco-labelling - Coursework Example

Visioning Sustainability for Change Name Course Tutor Unit Code Date Introduction Agenda 21 of the Rio Earth Summit identified eco-labelling as a tool to inspire consumers to embrace more ethically sustainable consumption patterns by purchasing ‘green products’. The aim of the decision was to shore up the starring role of eco-labels in nurturing more ecological consumption patterns. This comes at a time when the sustainability agenda and the progression of sustainable practices is the top agenda in the midst of climate change and other negative effects the environment suffers by environmentally destructive practices. The desire for ‘green products’ has gone up as consumers are today more cautious of the environment in which they live. As a result governments, institutions and corporations are adjusting their structures to equal preferred results around sustainability. Eco-labels can be exceptionally valuable tools for promoting sustainability. Eco-labels by now are an important part in many aspects in the policy content involving sustainability and in treating the sustainability difficulties facing the globe (Elliot & Schlaepfer, 2001). What are Eco-labels? An eco-label is a market-based inducement intended to motivate producers to embrace environmentally-ethical or environmentally-friendly practices in their production activities, for such products to be stocked by retailers, and to make easy fitting decision-making for the customer. An eco-label ascertains a commodity that meets various environmental performance criteria/standards. The elementary objective of eco-labelling is to introduce environmental along with ethical concerns into the supply-demand cycle that has usually been led by cost, aesthetics, and efficacy among other product attributes. The practice was established by governments, industrialists, and third-company establishments as a voluntary slant to environmental accreditation practiced globally. Given the wide array of prod­ucts offered in the market-place, environmental performance labels as well as declarations differ to that great extent. This caused confusion and deception came in necessitating the intervention by the International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO) by developing three broad types of voluntary environmental labels to help dealers in evading inaccuracies (Bostr¨om, 2006). Table 1: Classification of Environmental Labels Type I Individual Voluntary, multiple-criteria-based, third-party program awarding a permit that sanctions the use of environmental labels on products indicative of inclusive environmental preference of a product in a precise product group based on life-cycle. Type II Explanatory environmental self-declaration assertions. Type III Voluntary programs offering quantified environmental data of a product, under pre-set categories of factors set by a competent third party and based on life-cycle valuation, and certified by that or a different capable third party. Source: (Bostr¨om, 2006). A lot of types of products are assessed by eco-labelling organisations all over the world. While equating related products, eco-labels and other voluntary environmental performance criteria is used to enlighten buying choices and acquire ‘greener’ products. Greenwashing With the ever increasing promotion of environmental sustainability through using ‘greener’ products, their demand has increased substantially. Consumers are desiring for commodities that are frankly more sustainable, easily accessible and that can be used efficiently. Therefore, manufacturers and dealers are working tirelessly to meet this demand. According to Greenpeace (2012), green advertising is greater than before, going up by over ten times in the past two decades and has multiplied by over three times as of 2006. At present, there are probably over 600 “green labels” all over the world, with majority of them relaying a lot of information. However, a lot of them are self-certified, or designed by individual companies. Quite a number some are even possibly premeditated to confuse, and the commendable task of purchasing ethically turns out to be overwhelming. Every day, the consumer is presented with abundant appearances on uncountable shelves that not ever empty and a bombardment of ethical varieties. Eco-label assertions vary in the number of products, in the power and centre of their assurances. This has left the consumer lost in a desert of ethics, sustainability and debate and cannot viably scrutinise all the information. Quite a few marketers have taken total advantage of this by making ‘green’ claims that they do not in actual reality support. The number of companies issuing ‘green’ claims over the past decade has increased dramatically as consumers and companies pay more attention to their environmental footmark. Inconsistencies have been experienced between companies’ actual conduct and claims about being ‘green’. This led to the development of the term greenwashing. Greenwashing is the act of confusing consumers as regards the environmental practices of a company (firm-level greenwashing) or the environmental profits of a product/service (product-level greenwashing) (Greenpeace, 2012). Criteria for Effective Eco-labelling The latest great upsurge in the number of eco-labelling programs and certified products presenting a vast assortment of choice within which claims of greenwashing serve to further make ethical-buying difficult asking the consumer to not only comprehend the barrage of labels, but query their credibility as well. In order for eco-labels to be a true respected means to the sustainability developments, they should be credible. The ISEAL Alliance launched its Credibility Principles in 2013 to help consumers to better ascertain the standards which the requirements of credibility need to be fulfilled (ISEAL, 2014). ISEAL’s Credibility Principles offer a visualisation of the main values agreed all over the world that underpin effective sustainability standards. They provide a refined and dependable language to handle sustainability standards, which possibly will play an ever more key role in impending sustainable practices. The major role that the Credibility Principles play is to assess the qualified qualities of commodities and businesses and can act as a way to advance the comprehension on the differences stuck between credible and non-credible eco-labels. The Credibility Principles are: Sustainability, Transparency, Relevance, Truthfulness, Accessibility, Rigour, Efficiency, Improvement, Engagement, and Impartiality (ISEAL, 2014). On the other hand, a lot of criteria has been developed to fight greenwashing. The common examples are EnviroMedia, TerraChoice, and Greenpeace. Greenpeace has developed a four-step criteria to identify greenwashing; Dirty Business, Ad Bluster, Political Spin, and It's the Law, Stupid! (Greenpeace, 2012). Credible Eco-labels Credible eco-labels communicate to the consumer the product attributes that are acknowledged by the organisation issuing the label, such as reduced carbon emissions, energy-efficiency or reduced indoor domestic waste product. Eco-label certification standards permits a company to use the mark or logo (the eco-label) linked to the standard to market its product. An eco-label may apply to one attribute, such as decreasing water consumption, or many aspects all the way through a product’s life-cycle, such as carbon footprint, material content, energy consumption, and human toxicity, among many others. There are quite a few eco-labels established with the aim of improving environmental practices that are recognised internationally and that meet the ISEAL Credibility Principles. These are: Energy star, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Fair trade, Cradle to Cradle, EcoLogo, Bird Friendly, Green Seal, and Sea Choice, among others. In this paper, I pay close attention to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) (Bostr¨om, 2006). The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) was set up in 1993 with the main intent of stimulating sustainable forestry all over the world (Cashore et al., 2004). The first country to issue a synchronised nationwide FSC standard is Sweden. Over time the organisation has grown and become an internationally recognised organisation. It has attracted membership from organisations representing social interests such as trade unions, environmental interests as well as business interests. Strictly, each one of these three interest groups have the same, one-third, bit of decision-making clout. FSC has framed ten principles that are supposed to guide an accountable and sustainable forestry in any local environment. The concept of credibility is applied so as to understand how FSC has expanded its position relative to other actors in regulation as well as in relation to the general public. Credibility refers to the discernment and expectations that the actions of an actor or agent are Sustainable, Transparent, Relevant, Truthful, Accessible, Rigour, Efficient, Improved, Engaged, and Impartial. The credibility of an actor’s operations must be understood in relation to other actors, which can be either generalized others or specific others (Bostr¨om, 2006). FSC was able to institute a noteworthy standing in the relevant regulatory field of forestry in Sweden. Its apparent credibility has much to do with whom it has included. Widely held catch words such as engagement, independence and transparency by themselves may not certainly describe why credibility is formed. A deeper insight on what the various participants can contribute is required, which in turn re-counts their specific power resources. The power resources include material resources, such as money and remunerated or voluntary labour as well as symbolic resources. FSC has a renowned and accepted name and logo which has been a very much important symbolic power resource. FSC is also seen as a formal organisation and has an institutional status that has provided symbolic resource (Bostr¨om, 2003). Another form of power resource FSC has in the specific expert knowledge that the organisation has acquired. In market-driven governance areas where the state does not intervene, such as eco-labelling, it is clear that their resources are vital. It is so not just for the reason that market players are those who almost practice the standards, but since they every so often have distinctive understanding regarding viability, market capabilities, consumer behaviour and technical alternatives. Central network positions are vital for a standardisation organisation (SO). A business actor with great market penetration power does not simply grasp customers and prompt competitors, it as well has the capacity to direct influential demands end to end the entire chain of production and distribution. The structure of a pro-FSC network incorporated buyers of forest resource products such as furniture sellers and other merchants. This was vital to the victory of the FSC faithful forest companies in urging more doubtful companies to back FSC instead of developing another model (Ozinga, 2001). A lot of standardisation inventiveness, including eco-labelling, are used out of state arenas as a reaction to state ‘failures’. However, there is a slight condition that the eco-labelling organisations comply with the law. The overall notion with eco-labelling is to make available a system that sets criteria away from the least possible level of the law so as to envisage the ‘fore-runners’. Therefore, standardisation essentially works inside and in relation to a broader regulatory space, which in turn necessitates the involvement of regulatory authorities. Even if FSC strongly embraces its self-ruling position, it has been keen to cultivate an open and cooperative association with the ruling classes besides individual executives (Cashore et al., 2004). By raising different concerns and publishing new ‘codes’ or ‘frames’, credible eco-labelling organisations support both prospective supporters and directed actors to recognise, ascertain and appreciate main events and situations in fresh ways. In the field of forestry, environmental organisations (EOs) help to clear up, concretize, and simplify the importance of ordinarily alleged thoughts around sustainability and biodiversity. FSC has effectively presented eco-labels supported by EOs and has as a result backed to the supply of environmental-ethically friendly products and at the same time roused the demand and stress for such products through local, countrywide and worldwide activism (Bostr¨om, 2004). The credibility of an SO is exceeds the entirety of the abilities of the individual participants and members. The mishmash of the individual abilities and the participants’ power resources form the FSC’s capability to act and its credibility is a straightforward underlying principle of engagement. FSC offers an organisational structure that supports stable collaboration in a potentially efficient and relevant way. It has long been recognised that ‘organisation’ cuts transaction costs and keep up that the foundation of efficiency. Even though eco-labelling targets not to fashion synchronisation between business actors, FSC is all the same helpful in reaching a more efficient discourse among participants, manufacturers and state authorities; and that’s why absolutely innovative labelling developments possibly will reach for reputable SOs (Bostr¨om, 2005). Another element that contributes to the credibility of FSC is the ability to impartially arbitrate to overcome particularistic comforts and to boost team spirit as well as to arrange for forms for discussion and shared knowledge (Bostr¨om, 2005). Intellectuals have witnessed that continual collaboration over time in structured systems encompassing many actors can result in shared beliefs around right manners, a degree of common trust and mutual learning. This finding is one of the most outstanding in the case of FSC. Participating in standard-setting undertakings has gotten organisations closer to each other. The level of exchange of ideas given the aggressive argument regarding climate that carried the day earlier in the sectors of agriculture and forestry has been great. Despite the fact that certainly not everything will be agreed upon, most agents have learned to converse with each other and to esteem each other’s’ plans and competency (Bostr¨om, 2006). Non-credible Eco-labels (Greenwashing) Greenwashing can either be at the firm-level or the product-level. Examples of greenwashing include Walmart, LG Refrigerators, and General Electric, among many others. Walmart is an example at the firm-level. Walmart is a leading retail chain store company. In 2005 the company was struggling tremendously. Walmart was plagued with filthy headlines mainly on its account of oppressing employees and suppliers finally. As a consequence, around 8 percent of its shoppers had stopped visiting its stores. Also, public crowds were stalling or suspending one-third of its expansion plans. Stockholders were turning out to be worried as the company’s share price fell by 20 per cent between 2000 and 2005. The company embraced sustainability as a corporate strategy in 2005 amid the growing resentment against the company’s practices. The management well thought-out going ‘green’ was a superior route for fixing the company’s deteriorating image. It presented a perfect way to cut expenses and, instead of destabilisation Walmart’s control, sustainability could in fact boost its power over suppliers. Moreover, ‘green’ politics had robust charm between metropolitan liberals in the Northeast as well as West Coast — the same marketplaces Walmart wanted to enter so as to hold onto its going United States growth (Marc, 2011). Since the then-CEO Lee Scott first made public Walmart’s sustainability program, the company’s head office in Bentonville, Ark., has been issuing constant statements on the issue of cutting energy consumption, reducing waste, and, of late, retailing healthier foodstuff. Most of these pronouncements speak out objectives, not what has been accomplished. The objectives sound bold enough such that they consistently produce full headlines and breathless explanations of how Walmart may perhaps re-form the world by twisting manufacturing activities to its drive. However, a look back at the reportage of Walmart’s sustainability promotions over the past decade, it is outrageous just how much of a public relations (PR) lift the media have given Walmart and how petite open accountability they have claimed in return. A number of the most thoughtful environmental values of Walmart’s business model are not just on the table yet (Marc, 2011). The company does not talk about them and, even with using a lot of ink and air play on the Walmart’s ‘green’ undertakings, the news media do not either. The company merely craves to sell more. Today, Walmart says it aims to cut down the amount of toxic waste involved in manufacturing some of the things it retails. That’s an incredibly good thing, except that the whole thing else the company does is premeditated to undercut the durability of consumer merchandises, speed up the movement of merchandises from industrial units to landfill, and get customers more merchandises to spend on. The company may succeed in decreasing the resources used to make a pair of trousers or a refrigerator, those gains will be outshined by the growth in the number of pairs of trousers or a refrigerators being bought (Joel, 2010). Walmart has a great motivation to raise the scale of consumption. Sustainability needs to be more than a meek sideshow to this great undertaking. Walmart cannot show any declaration regarding ‘greening’ its supply chain based on the durability of merchandises or the speed at which houses burn over the things its stocks to vend. The company’s progress towards renewable energy is infinitesimal. In the last several years Walmart declared that it had set an objective of being “supplied by 100 per cent renewable energy.” The company’s renewable energy objective has been principally effective in drawing media limelight by appearing in thousands of newspaper articles plus numerous blog posts. A lot of these publications use the announcement as the underlying theme to highlight the retailer’s renewable energy plans, which include setting solar panels on 130 retail stores in California and ordering 180 million kilowatt-hours of wind energy in Texas every year (Paul et al., 2010). The stories have formed a general impression that Walmart is making inordinate headway on renewable energy. On the other hand, Walmart at present gets less than 2 per cent of its power from solar and wind energy. Walmart’s growth and sales objectives have precise time-frames committed, however, its renewable energy objective remains indefinite. Therefore, as Walmart grows, partly owing to favour engendered by its ‘green’ crusade, its environmental effect will keep increasing right alongside it. Even as Walmart has been talking large about renewable energy, the amounts of greenhouse gas it emits have been going up gradually. For instance, between 2005 and 2009, the company’s reported greenhouse gas emissions in the United States went up by close to 7 per cent. In Asia, they doubled up. Walmart announced that its activities produced 21 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2009, and the emissions are projected to reach expects 13 million metric tons by 2015. The company’s renewable energy projects alongside its efficiency endeavours are functioning at a level that cannot match even the slightest bit in league with its size and growth curve. In the United States, Walmart’s energy-efficiency footsteps have abridged energy consumption in retail stores constructed prior to 2006 by around 10 per cent, saving around 1.5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions every year. But then again new retail stores constructed in the United States as of 2006 have added over 3.5 million metric tons to the company’s annual CO2 emissions (Paul et al., 2010). In 2009, Walmart sparked commotion as soon as it pronounced that it would develop a Sustainability Index to measure the environmental impacts of every one item on its shelves and afford a cool rating system to support shoppers in making ‘greener’ selections. CEO Mike Duke termed the index as “a simple implement that enlightens shoppers regarding the sustainability of products” and supports them “consume in a more sustainable fashion.” Walmart fixed a five-year schedule but so far this striving plan has no much to pride itself in (Joel, 2010). Conclusion Eco-labels are important in informing consumers on the product qualities they should look for in making purchasing decisions. However, given the increase in the sustainability developments, marketers have taken the advantage of the volunteerism in eco-labelling to make false accusations on their products as being ‘green’. This raised the concern for the credibility of eco-labels. The ISEAL alliance issued the Credibility Principles that are used to identify credible eco-labels. FSC, a full member of the ISEAL alliance has shown adherence to these principles. The organisation meets the Credibility Principles and, therefore, its members can be trusted by consumers buying for good. Greenpeace also issued indications of greenwashing. Walmart is a perfect manifestation of eco-labelling claims through greenwashing and, therefore, cannot be trusted by consumers buying for good. References Bostr¨om, M, 2003, ‘Environmental Organisations in New Forms of Political Participation: Ecological Modernisation and the Making of Voluntary Rules’, Environmental Values Vol. 12: pp.175–93. 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