Several Ecolabel Seals For Cleaners And Other Products

Green Seal: A life-cycle-based environmental sustainability label for products, services, and companies. Founded in 1989, Green Seal mostly serves the institutional and business-to-business markets, certifying products in 11 categories such as paints and coatings, printing and writing papers, and institutional cleaning products. Sponsor: Green Seal

Design for the Environment: A government seal available to companies that design or reformulate products using safe chemical ingredients. To date, the DfE label is on more than 2,800 products, mostly cleaners, for institutional as well as some consumer applications. Plans are to extend the DfE label to personal care products. Sponsor: Environmental Protection Agency

BioPreferred: A government seal that promotes the purchase and use of biobased products. Biobased content for products and packaging is indicated on the label as a percent. Approximately 900 products were certified before certification was suspended this year because of lack of funding. Sponsor: U.S. Department of Agriculture

EU Ecolabel: A Europe-wide environmental seal launched in 1992. More than 17,000 products bear the label, of which about 30% are household cleaning products. The label’s administrators strive to harmonize assessment criteria with that used by national labeling programs such as the Nordic Swan and Germany’s Blue Angel. Sponsor: European Commission