The environmental footprint of products
Shopping with the environment in mind is not always easy: little transparency on products usually also means spending more time shopping. Perhaps you have experienced the following situation yourself: you are standing in the supermarket in front of a shelf with countless products from different manufacturers and all sorts of brands in every conceivable variant. And all you want is to buy the product in its environmentally friendly form. You try to fight your way through the jungle of on-pack advertising promises and mostly incomprehensible, unfamiliar ingredients in order to work out somehow which product might be the best choice.
It is enough to make you despair, and in the end you take the one that makes the best first impression. Because time is running out and you postpone your intention of saving the world until later…
Let us take laundry detergent as a practical example:
One promises to be free from microplastics, but the packaging is made of plastic – and ideally you would like to avoid that too. Another is declared “natural” or “ecological”. But the ingredients sound anything but natural. The product carries no reputable certifications to back up the promises. So you try to find some sort of middle ground and choose a product that at least partly meets your own sustainability requirements. And so you settle for the “supposedly microplastic-free” detergent in the plastic bottle, because at least it says “recycled” on it – meaning that the plastic bottle was made from recycled plastic. But these are all just manufacturer promises; I cannot check or verify anything.
It is not only the person in front of the supermarket shelf or the computer who faces this problem, but producers and product designers too. For a product actually to be as “sustainable” as it later claims to be at the point of sale, the manufacturer also has to take a great many decisions. Decisions about raw materials, suppliers, formulation and processing, right through to the design of the packaging, to name just a few.
The European Commission now wants to counter this problem with an initiative:
In future, companies are to be obliged to substantiate claims about the environmental footprint of their products or services. These claims should demonstrate and present the overall environmental impact of the product or service in a way that is comprehensible, comparable and verifiable for consumers and producers across the EU. That is intended to empower everyone in the supply chain, from producer to consumer, to make environmentally friendly and sustainable product and purchasing decisions. In turn, this can also drive the market for environmentally friendly goods and encourage companies to act sustainably. Because demand for sustainable products and for the corresponding proof is greater than ever. At the same time it strengthens consumer confidence in existing eco-labels and environmental information – confidence that has declined in recent years.
The flustix initiative specialised years ago in exactly what the European Commission is aiming at with this project. Together with our accredited testing, certification and licensing partners we devote ourselves to reducing plastics and avoiding waste through recycling. In doing so we want to promote a responsible approach to the valuable material that is plastic, and to save CO2.
We naturally hope that the environmental footprint for products will catch on and be a success; we support this initiative and are following further developments.
Until then, you can certainly rely on our five product seals when it comes to plastic-free and recycled products.
What is your view on the subject?
If you have questions or comments, do write to us in the comments.