Does a green product exist?
June 29th 2009 SCA Tissue Europe finds out how a product earns the title ‘environmentally friendly’, and whether this is always justified
It is becoming increasingly difficult these days to find a product that has not been declared by its manufacturers to be environmentally friendly.
But can so many products be ‘green’? And what exactly constitutes a green product? Does it mean that the item can be reused or recycled? Or is it the manufacturing process that dictates how environmentally-friendly a product is? One criterion that many customers use is whether the product has an environmental label. Labels can be a useful marker, but the fact that each labeling body uses different criteria to assess environmental impact makes it difficult to draw any comparison. The Blue Angel label sets standards for product safety and chemical use and requires paper products to come from 100% recovered pulp. However, it makes few demands regarding emissions to air and water. The Swan label, on the other hand, does regulate emissions to air as well as discharge of substances into the water. Its demands on paper production are different, too – the Swan label stipulates that at least 20% of the raw materials used for virgin fibres come from certified sustainable forests.
Then there are the three types of eco-label defined by the International Standards Organisation. The criteria for ISO 14024 labelled products are based on life cycle analysis and are easy to understand, but their pass/fail structure is fairly inflexible. The second type of eco-label, ISO 14021, uses declarations by the manufacturer or retailer. A wide variety of environmental claims can be taken into account under this flexible standard, though it potentially allows manufacturers to avoid key issues when making environmental declarations. The third type of label, ISO 14025, uses independent reviews of a product’s life cycle. Also known as an Environmental Product Declaration, this provides a more comprehensive picture of a product’s environmental impact. The downside here is that there is no clear pass/fail criteria which makes it difficult to for the public to understand and compare products.
A climate has been created where manufacturers can trade on the customer confusion to make ‘greenwashing’ claims, or environmental claims that have no evidence to back them up. A company that makes a recyclable product with biodegradable packaging may be quick to point this out. But perhaps the product has been made using materials that have been transported halfway around the globe. Or maybe large amounts of chemical waste have been created during the manufacturing process.
It is important to look at the company as a whole in order to assess the environmental impact of its products. This is why Life Cycle Analysis is important, since it assesses the footprint of a product from cradle to grave.
Treading carefully
• SCA’s forests all meet Forestry Stewardship Council criteria. For every tree felled in SCA’s forests three more will replace it. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by these forests roughly corresponds to the total volume of emissions from the SCA Group’s production plants.
• Most SCA products are made from renewable and recyclable materials: at the moment around 50% of the content of SCA’s European tissue products are recycled fibres. We certify our mills according to ISO environmental (ISO 14001/EMAS) standard. Waste from our sawmills is used to produce biofuels which are used in manufacturing industries and in municipal heating plants.
• When it comes to transport, SCA claims to operate some of the world’s cleanest dry cargo ships.
• Our finished products are designed to help reduce overconsumption and waste since most dispensers give out only one hand towel or wiper at a time.
• We have received many prestigious third-party accreditations for our environmentally-friendly operations. In June 2007 SCA was named the second greenest company in the world in the Green Leaders Global Top Ten, published by the Independent newspaper in conjunction with Ethical Investment Research Services. In January 2009, SCA featured in Innovest’s list of the world’s 100 Most Sustainable Corporations for the fifth year running. And in April we were named among the Ethisphere Institute’s list most ethical companies for the second consecutive year.
Today the terms ‘company ethics’ and ‘sustainability’ are increasingly taking the place of ‘environmentally-friendly’. These tags need to apply to a company as a whole, no-one would describe an individual product as ‘ethical’. In the same way it is hard to find a product that can be truly considered ‘green’ because every product needs to be assessed in terms of the company that produces it.
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