The Sustainable Purchasing Media
What is an environmental claim?
It is a claim made by a business to inform the public about its position concerning the environment. The claim is usually in the form of a summary and is easily understandable. The claim may be made in relation to a product, a service, or the environmental management of the business.
An environmental claim made by the business itself is a self-declared environmental claim. A self-declared claim does not usually take into account all of the stages of a product or service life cycle.
A claim should be transparent, informative and as complete as possible.
ISO Standard 14021 was published in 1999 in order to provide guidelines for the use of self-declared claims.
What is ISO Standard 14021?
ISO 14021 covers environmental claims about products made under the sole responsibility of the businesses concerned, i.e. self-declared environmental claims. It establishes general requirements for any environmental claims and seeks to ensure the relevance and sincerity of such claims. It also aims to reduce confusion and defines the requirements for the 12 most common self-declared environmental claims:
- Reduced Resource Use
- Recovered Energy
- Waste Reduction
- Reduced Energy Consumption
- Reduced Water Consumption
- Extended Life Product
- Reusable and Refillable
- Designed for Disassembly
- Compostable
- Degradable
- Recyclable
- Recycled Content
The ISO Standard 14021 document can be purchased on the www.iso.org site.
Here is an environmental claims guide published in conjunction with Competition Bureau Canada. It includes many examples of environmental claims.
Environmental Claims:
A Guide for Industry and Advertisers
By: Canadian Standards Association (CSA)
We also found the following summary published in French by AFNOR.
(In french only)
Autodéclarations: La promotion environnementale des produits
La norme NF ISO 14021
By: Nadia Boeglinet Philippe Wetterwald
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