Consumers are becoming more mindful of how their consumption and purchasing choices can make a positive impact towards sustainable consumption. They are now more conscious of choosing more sustainable options and increasingly request more information to better understand, quantify, and compare the sustainable attribute of the products they purchase. This calls for brands to improve their marketing practices and adopt transparent and reliable communication styles. In order to support this consumption shift to achieve more effective and reliable engagement with consumers, UNEP and the Akatu Institute developed a video presenting the Guidelines for Providing Product Sustainability Information. The video presents the 10 principles that make up the Guidelines and provide concrete examples for each of the them.
Guidelines for Providing Product Sustainability Information
Sustainable products are a growing business opportunity, especially for emerging and developing countries. Still, challenges impair the rapid growth of green markets. Besides the malpractice of greenwashing, key barriers to sustainable consumption include the uncoordinated proliferation of diverging and/or unchecked product sustainability information tools and the resulting mistrust and confusion among consumers, as well as information providers. A key challenge is the lack of international guidance and agreement on how to convey consumer information. The Guidelines, published in 2017, aim to address this through a comprehensive set of high-level principles, ranging from fundamental to aspirational, and guidance on how to apply them. They aim to be useful to developed and developing countries alike, and implementable for companies of all size. The target audience includes providers of information, as well as those that regulate and analyze consumer information (e.g. governments, certification bodies, NGOs). The development of the Guidelines was supported by the German government through the International Climate Initiative.
The guidelines, applicable to all regions and companies of all sizes, are available in full format in English, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.
Download the guidelines here
