The Criteria Process

Experts from the Nordic countries develop proposals for criteria. The experts come from government, environmental organisations, trade, industry and Nordic Ecolabelling itself.

Before The Nordic Ecolabelling Board finalises the criteria, they are sent out for review.

To ensure that an Ecolabelled product is always at the cutting edge from an environmental point-of-view, criteria are revised repeatedly. As product development progresses and new scientific discoveries are made, the criteria are raised like steps on an escalator.

Approximately every three to five years, the criteria documents are reviewed and products carrying the Nordic Ecolabel have new, revised criteria to live up to. In this way, the label contribute to ongoing environmental improvements.

RPS

In order to select the product groups which are most suitable for ecolabelling, Nordic Ecolabelling investigates their relevance, potential and how they can be controlled.

Relevance is assessed according to the specific environmental problems relating to the product group and how wide they are in scope.

Potential is evaluated by looking at the possible environmental gain within the product group.

Steerability is a measure of how the product, activity or problem might be affected by the ecolabel.