Page 12 - Social_Sustainable consumerism

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Chapter 2 The indentification

of sustainable products

2.1 The role of Consumers’ associations

Consumers associations are non-for-profit civil society organisations that seek to protect the consumers
from abuse from the industry such as unsafe products,false advertising, false information on products, or
pollution. They represent the consumers and users defending their rights, educating and advising them.
Thus, consumer associations play a key role to provide information on products and contribute to the
promotion of eco-labels and other sustainable labels.

Consumers association first mission is to inform about products, and provide recommendations, mostly
based on prices and quality, as reflected in their products’ tests. However, they are gettingmore and more
engaged in the sustainability field. For instance, the Netherlands mainstream consumers’ association
Consumentenbond include since 2005 information of the ethical consumers, including product related
environmental data such as energy efficiency.

2.2 The importance of products labeling

One thing is the willingness of becoming a responsible consumer and taking care of the environment
through purchases. However, this might be challenging considering the high complexity of production
processes and the difficulty to find exhaustive information on the product and the way it was developed.
Traceability and correct labelling are legal obligation of the companies. Indeed, in Europe, the law obliges
the companies to establish a registration system that must be available to the authorities, and to label
their product in a way that facilitates its identification and location.

In addition to this minimum legal obligation, many packaged and processed products include additional
labels that contain information, such as a recycling label that indicates which container it goes to. When
we talk about sustainable labels, we are referring to those that provide us with information on the
environmental characteristics of products, such as their origin or the quality of their ingredients. The
objectives of such labels are to raise awareness and provide information about the negative ecological
impact of production, to minimize the use of products harmful to our health, limit the use of GMOs
(genetically modified organisms) or reduce unnecessary harm to animals by avoiding, for example, animal
experimentation.

Picture from Fuzzy Rescue