Background - What is Eco-Verification?
9. Enhanced Eco-verification is part of the sustainability package agreed to by Cabinet in February 2007 (CAB Min (07) 4/1A). "Eco-verification" originally formed part of a broader Sustainable Government Procurement initiative in this package but was publicly announced as an independent initiative and has since been developed as such.1
10. "Eco-verification" is a tool. It includes four elements:
- setting standards for the environmental impacts of products and processes and the environmental management practices of firms, farms and forests;
- determining how to measure compliance with these standards, including the establishment of standards for measurement and the underlying measurement science;
- verifying that standards have been met, a task that usually involves independent bodies which are, themselves, often accredited by national or international accreditation agencies; and
- certifying that standards have been met and that firms can use eco-labels for their products and management practices.
11. The process and infrastructure surrounding the Environmental Choice NZ eco-label can be used to illustrate these components. This label is owned by the Government and administered by the NZ Ecolabelling Trust. The Trust sets the standards that underlie the Environmental Choice label. It licenses use of this label on products (e.g. paints) that are produced under specified environmental management systems (e.g. minimising energy wastage and water pollution) and which meet specified packaging and product standards. Compliance with these standards are checked on an on-going basis by independent third parties. Assurance about integrity is further backed up by the fact that the standards set by the Environmental Choice NZ Trust are based (variously) on NZ and International Standards Organisation standards and by the fact that the third-party assessors must themselves be accredited by the Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand.
12. This example illustrates the way in which the process of eco-verification is supported by an eco-verification infrastructure. The latter provides (Figure 1,2 next page):
- environmental standards (1) and practical methods and measurement processes (2) that firms and sectors can use to meet these standards;
- verification (3) and certification (4) methods to establish that standards are being met and give consumers and stakeholders confidence that claims made about environmental standards are well founded; and
- good underlying processes for grounding standards and tests and accrediting verifiers and certifiers (5), for updating and aligning standards and methods to meet evolving overseas requirements (6) and for networking and information flows to keep all the parts of the system aligned (7).
13. Annex 3 provides examples to illustrate aspects of eco-verification in New Zealand in each these areas. Notable features are:
- the range of products, processes and systems that could fall within the ambit of Enhanced Eco-verification;
- the wide variety and differing qualities of the standards, codes of practices and accords involved;
- the number and diversity of the public, private, national and international organisations involved in setting eco-standards and codes of practice, in checking and certifying that these have been met and in checking that the checkers and certifiers themselves meet satisfactory standards;
- the multi-faceted and networked nature of the relationships and interdependencies required to make the eco-verification infrastructure work; and
- the dynamic nature of eco-verification which arises out of growing awareness of approaching environmental crises, rapidly shifting consumer expectations and a kaleidoscope of standards- and regulation-based responses from international, national, local and business organisations.
Figure 1: Components of eco-verification infrastructure
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