Guide: What is Cradle to Cradle Certification (C2C)?

The world is full of product certifications. Some are meant to verify safety, compatibility, or compliance with regulations. Others are focused on sustainability, ethical treatment of workers, or environmental concerns. We've written about many such certifications before, including B Corp and Fairtrade, two of the biggest.

Another relatively prominent certification is C2C or Cradle to Cradle. You may or may not have heard of C2C before, though you've almost certainly seen or used products that hold the certification. What is it, what does it mean, and can you add your products to the list? Let's talk about it.

What is the Cradle to Cradle Certification?

For the simplest overview, we can turn to the description provided by Cradle to Cradle themselves.

In this description, they say:

"Cradle to Cradle Certified® is the leading multi-attribute standard used globally across industries by designers, brands and manufacturers for designing and making products that enable a healthy, equitable and sustainable future. For more than a decade, Cradle to Cradle Certified has been helping companies to innovate and optimize materials and products according to the world's most advanced science-based measures."

So, Cradle to Cradle is a multi-attribute standard with global reach, focused on sustainability. That's good for a broad overview, but what does it mean in practice?

Cradle to Cradle is a sustainability and circularity certification. As you may know from our recent coverage of the topic, circularity is the idea that products can be produced, purchased, used, and then returned and repaired and reused, recycled, or repurposed, instead of being discarded in a linear production to landfill pipeline.

Cradle to Cradle has developed a framework to assess the circularity, social responsibility, and sustainability of products, across five categories.

• Material Health. This category evaluates how safe the product's materials are for humans and for the environment. It prioritizes using materials, chemicals, and processes that are safe for people and have low, no, or positive impacts on the environment whenever possible, as well as selecting them for their ability to be reused or recycled.
• Product Circularity. This category assesses how well a product is designed to be reused or repurposed. Certified products should be designed with intentionality behind their life cycle rather than being made for one use and discarded.
• Clean Air & Climate Protection. This category examines the manufacturing process for the products, looking for neutral or positive impacts on air quality, the use of renewable energy, and a balance of greenhouse gas emissions, all with the goal of encouraging products to be as low-impact or as positive as possible.
• Water & Soil Stewardship. This category inspects products for their impact on water and soil resources throughout the manufacturing process. If there's any impact at all on watersheds, soil ecosystems, or other elements of the environment, it should be minimized as much as possible.
• Social Fairness. This category seeks to promote equity, fair treatment, and positive business practices in the realm of labor rights, human rights, social justice, and strong communities. The bar can be low for human treatment around the world, but Cradle to Cradle seeks to raise it.

Currently, Cradle to Cradle is on version 4.1 of their standard, which was released in May of 2024 and took effect in July of 2024. Not all C2C Certified products uphold this standard, but in the list of certified products, C2C informs you of what level of standard they reached. In general, each iteration of the standard increases the baseline according to the most modern information and best practices for each of the five categories.

You can download the full PDF of the C2C certification scope from the link above.

Four Ascending Achievement Levels

The Cradle to Cradle certification applies to individual products, not to companies. It also has four different tiers of achievement for each category. A product's overall certification is the lowest tier achieved across those categories. They are, simply, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. So, if your product achieves Gold in three of the five categories, Platinum in one, and Silver in one, your product will earn a Silver Cradle to Cradle Certification.

Certification is evaluated by third-party auditing companies, and each product needs to be recertified every three years. Further, companies need to show progress at each reassessment; you can't achieve certification and rest on your laurels since the world and the standards change around us. Cradle to Cradle's overall goal is not just to push for better products; it's to push companies to be leaders in circularity within their industries.

Currently, Cradle to Cradle has twelve partners providing third-party assessments. Your company will need to work with one of them to provide proof of performance along their five axes for certification.

What Does it Take to be Cradle to Cradle Certified?

Any business, large or small, can seek Cradle to Cradle certification. To do so, the business in question needs to commit to a five-step pathway to proactive change.

The first step is to prioritize tangible action across the five realms listed above. Some of them may or may not be applicable to your business depending on the kind of business you run, but the goal is to analyze, audit, and assess your current processes, and seek improvement in any relevant category.

The second step is to develop and enact roadmaps for tangible change where possible across the five realms of action. In some cases, you may already be as proactive as possible. In others, you may be lagging behind the industry standard or the cutting edge. In any case, your goal is to set up a roadmap for improvement anywhere improvement is possible.

The third step is to seek transformation in your business models, your systems, and any collaboration you have within your overall value chain. No business stands alone; everyone works with suppliers, logistics firms, contractors, and more. The idea is to put pressure on those elements of the supply chain to improve them as well, and bring the entire global standard up with it.

The fourth step is to verify and validate your sustainability and performance. All of what we've said so far is just pretty words without tangible metrics to back it up, so Cradle to Cradle provides those metrics you can use to measure, assess, and track improvement as you go. The Standard is not necessarily a one-time compliance goal; it's an ongoing, growing, and evolving set of standards and goals to maintain.

The fifth step is to take up a leadership position within your industry and help guide your peers towards a circular, safe, and equitable future. While that sounds like a tall order, it's as much a "lead by example" goal as anything.

Who is Eligible for Cradle to Cradle Certification?

There are two qualifications for a product to be eligible for certification.

The first is to be a product eligible for certification. Yes, that sounds self-referential, but it's more specific than that. You can check the full product standards guide; section 2 discusses product eligibility. A product must be a tangible item (sorry, software devs), and it must not be a product that goes against the intent of Cradle to Cradle.

For example, products that cannot be certified include:

• Weapons or harmful items like barbed wire.
• Tobacco products.
• Products using materials from endangered or vulnerable species.
• Products using chemicals that can't be optimized, like carcinogenic monomers or mutagens.
• Products where the toxicity is the point, like pesticides.
• Products that are designed for non-circularity, like plastic cutlery, polystyrene food containers, and other disposable plastic items.
• Products intended for consumption, like pharmaceuticals, food, or beverages.

There are some items on the prohibited list that you might be surprised by, since other green or sustainable certifications might allow them, so it's a good idea to review whether or not your products comply. One noteworthy example is products involved in nuclear power generation; despite the benefits it offers, since it's not circular, it can't be part of the Cradle to Cradle ecosystem.

The second qualification is that your product is not on or using materials from the restricted materials list. This list includes some obvious materials, like asbestos and asbestos-derived materials, but also includes a wide range of chemicals that might be used in the manufacturing process. Make sure to check the list.

If you're not prohibited, and you're willing to commit to continuous improvement, you can proceed with the process.

Once you're willing to commit, you reach out to a third-party assessment organization and work with them to test, analyze, and evaluate your products. You also submit an application to the Cradle to Cradle Institute, sign the agreement, and pay the fees. Once the assessor has compiled results, they're audited by Cradle to Cradle, and a certification can be issued.

How Much Does Cradle to Cradle Certification Cost?

Certification requires fees, which are used to maintain the certification and support the process.

First is an annual fee for the business being certified. This applies to both new applicants and existing certification holders, and depends on the amount of revenue your business does. Companies under $2.5M USD annually have a $1,250 annual fee; this fee increases up to companies over $500M annual revenue, which is $17,500 annually.

Product certification fees apply to each product. The application is $5,650, recertification is $3,700, and additional fees apply for things like certificate extensions and revised certificates. The certification fee schedule is subject to change each year or with revisions of the standards, and you can find it here.

What Are the Benefits of Cradle to Cradle Certification?

Cradle to Cradle Certification has benefits, though they aren't always directly tangible and immediate.

As with most of the high-end sustainability and ethics certifications, Cradle to Cradle is a marketing opportunity. Since the organization is large and well-respected, the certification is strict, and validated third-party assessors are required to issue it, it has a lot of trust behind it. Not just anyone can achieve Cradle to Cradle certification.

Moreover, since annual improvements are required to maintain the certification, it's easy to lose. It's not just a one-time achievement; it's a badge of commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible within circular, ethical production frameworks.

Whether this means you can charge more for verified ethical products, or you just gain customers from the audience who cares the most, depends on the product and business involved.

The second major benefit is, of course, to the world around us. Cradle to Cradle's focus on circularity, sustainability, and equity, means that by achieving certification, you know you're doing good in the world, and doing your part to help save the climate, the environment, and the people and animals on the planet. While this is somewhat abstract, it's still tangible, and the more businesses who participate, the better off everyone in the world will be.

And, though relatively minor, Cradle to Cradle maintains a list of all certified products on their website, so adding yours to the list is external validation.

So, with both tangible and intangible benefits, many businesses are finding it a worthwhile certification to pursue.

Should You Pursue Cradle to Cradle Certification for Your Products?

Whether or not you pursue Cradle to Cradle certification for your products is, at the end of the day, an individual decision.

You don't need Cradle to Cradle certification to be beneficial to the environment, to be circular in design and production, or to treat the people in your supply line with justice and equity. But, applying for and earning the certification is both external validation and can have tangible benefits from the people who pay attention to such certifications.

Because of the expense of the process, and the stringent requirements for both existing standards and ongoing growth and improvement, it might not always be possible to maintain certification, especially if your industry is relatively stagnant or in a good position. The smallest businesses might find the cost too steep, and larger brands might not find the benefits worthwhile, at least initially.

All of that said, there's no real downside to achieving certification if it's possible for you, so it's well worth consideration. The more businesses participate, the better off the whole world becomes. Why not give it a try?