Ecolabel Advisory Board: New at the Ecolabel

Ecolabel guidelines, on the basis of which products and services are then certified, are generally valid for four years. After that, a revision is necessary, for example to adapt criteria, to extend them to new product groups, to raise the level of requirements or to take account of current developments.

Revisions on the agenda

At the last advisory board meeting in December 2022, for example, the UZ 200 guideline for tourism, gastronomy and cultural enterprises was revised - the criteria for gastronomic offerings, for example, focused more strongly on climate-friendly food by using more organic food or expanding vegetarian offerings. In total, more than 40 criteria were modified in this guideline alone.

The guidelines UZ 54 Low-emission upholstered furniture and UZ 55 Bed mattresses were extended by updating various standards and laws, as was the guideline UZ 69 for textiles. In the case of Guideline UZ 11 Recycled Toner Modules and Reusable Ink Cartridges, in addition to adjustments in the area of standards and laws as a result of harmonisation with the corresponding Blue Angel Guideline, some aspects were changed, for example in the area of threshold values for certain problematic dyes, reprocessing and documentation as well as the requirements for packaging and usability.

In addition, there were detailed changes to a number of guidelines - i.e. changes during the validity period of the guideline, such as UZ 62 Green Meetings and Green Events, UZ 76 Green Producing, UZ 82 Tourism Destinations and UZ 301 Schools and Universities of Education.

All policy documents can be found here.