How Do You Verify Eco-Friendly Product Certifications?

There's a constant battle happening throughout global commerce today. On one side is the profit motive, the fiduciary duty a company has to its stakeholders to increase revenue and profits year over year, as much as possible, at all expenses. On the other side is ethical commerce, the goal of making products sustainable in the face of environmental damage, ethical in the face of social justice, and equitable in the face of human rights.

As it turns out, one of the easiest ways to shortcut to increased profits is to take advantage of lax regulations overseas, exploit people who have no way of fighting for their own rights, and prioritize short-term, environmentally damaging processes over long-term sustainability.

Fortunately, the winds are blowing in the direction of ethics and sustainability, even if it sometimes seems like an unwinnable battle. More and more companies are shifting to more domestic or even hyper-local production or changing to manufacturing processes that may be slower or more expensive but are much better for the environment.

It helps that there are numerous organizations around the world, both local and global, that have sprung up to help make the shift. A primary example is Fairtrade International, an organization that uses its own funds to support farms and laborers so they can survive the pressures of being out-competed by less ethical producers. To gather the funds to do this, they charge dues from member organizations and issue Fairtrade certifications for products whose entire supply lines can be traced to ethical and sustainable processes.

Many such organizations exist to do this in various ways. Some are regional or local, while others are international. Some focus on specific products or goods, while others encompass everything they can. Most of them issue some form of certification or validation, which becomes an emblematic badge a product manufacturer or vendor can include on packaging or labeling to verify that the product is produced in an eco-friendly and sustainable way.

There's just one problem with this process. When you have such an expansive list of ethical certifications, how do you know whether or not you can trust them? Obviously, big names like Fairtrade or B Corp are trustworthy, but what about smaller certifications you've never heard of before? When you see a label on a package, is it a valid label and an externally trusted source of ethics, or is it just another attempt at greenwashing?

When you can't trust the existence of a label, you want to be able to verify that the certification comes from an authoritative source and, more importantly, that the product actually has earned that certification. After all, if someone just prints the Fairtrade badge on their product, they can probably get away with it for a while until someone reports it to Fairtrade and they launch an investigation (and lawsuit) over it.

The good news is that you can often verify these certifications. The bad news is there's not necessarily an easy way to do it. So, let's talk about how.

Step 1: Look for a Certification Label on the Product

The first thing to do is look over the specific product you want to check.

The location of a certification label can vary depending on the product. For food items, it's often in the mass of information alongside the nutritional information, ingredients list, and package design. For non-food items, it might be on a label (such as a union bug on a garment's label), or it might be in an instruction manual as part of the basic information for the product. It might be printed on a product in other ways, such as part of the graphic design or part of the information surrounding a power cord and block. In some cases, it's only on the packaging, though this is generally rare; after all, product manufacturers want to tout their certifications as much as they can.

Sometimes, the label will be nothing more than the logo of the certification. Other times, it may have additional information, like a certification number, which you can use to look up information in the later steps of this process.

If a product does not have a visible certification label on the product itself, on the packaging, or on any labels it may have, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not ethically certified or produced. There are a few reasons why it might not be.

• The certification might apply to the business as a whole rather than the product, so it's not printed on the product.
• The product may be entirely ethically produced, but because the company doesn't want to pay dues or undergo a validation audit, they haven't bothered with the certification.
• The product may be ethically made, but the business had not yet earned the certification when that particular one was made, so the label hasn't been changed to reflect the new status yet.

Since these things can change from time to time, as often as every year in some cases, it can be tricky to keep on top of it all sometimes.

Step 1a: Check the Product's Manufacturer Website

There are a couple of reasons why you might want to check the website for a product's manufacturer rather than rely on information on the product's label.

For one, maybe you're getting a product secondhand, or it's old enough that the label has worn away, or the original packaging is long since lost. You can't necessarily tell if a product has an ethical certification if you don't have access to all of the information about it, right?

There are also a lot of certifications that apply to a business rather than to a product. The business might have a page, a press release, a badge, or some other indication on their site that they're certified. It's not something they can or want to print on their products, though. After all, while something like Fairtrade is a good selling point for consumers, it's a lot less meaningful to know that their corporate office is LEED certified, even if it's an indication that the business put some effort into its ethics and sustainability.

In some cases, there's simply no room on a product's packaging or the product itself to add another label or logo. Whether it hinders the design of the product, its aesthetics, or its usability, sometimes it just gets in the way.

Regardless, if you check the website for the product's manufacturer, you can often find some information about them and whether or not they have any relevant eco-friendly certifications.

Step 2: Find the Primary Site for the Certification

Once you have some idea of what certification (or certifications, plural) a product has, you can start to look up and validate those certifications.

The first thing to do is look up the certification itself. Does it seem like a worthwhile and reputable certification? Or does it seem like something a few corporate children spun up as a way to "value add" for their products, issuing themselves their own certifications to make it seem like they're validated when they aren't?

You may not be able to tell from the website of the certification itself what the truth may be. But, when you search the internet for details surrounding it, you'll have a better chance of developing an impression, good or bad.

You can also look into how meaningful a given certification may be. Some are very stringent, and earning them is a long, expensive, and detailed process that all but requires perfection from the product's manufacturer. Other certifications are so open-ended that they might as well be nothing. We're looking at you, "gluten-free" non-wheat products.

Sometimes, this is a point where you can generally rule out some certifications. If you simply don't trust the certification to come from a trustworthy source, there's no point in considering whether or not it has any value to it.

Step 3: Check if the Certification Has a Verification Option

Some certifying bodies make it easy to find whether or not a product or a company is certified using their process. Here are a few examples.

First, you have Fairtrade Finder. Fairtrade is one of the largest and most influential certifications, and their Fairtrade License Finder allows you to look up the licensing status of a business or a product. It can be clunky to use, but it's the best option for Fairtrade itself.

Another option is B Corp Finder. B Corps are corporations that have proven themselves to have ethical and sustainable operations, and being listed is a good way to validate that your operations are certified. There are over 7,300 B Corps, so you can use their search to find businesses that are certified.

We cover a few more options, such as the EWG product guide for nutrition, ingredient, and processing concerns, over in this article.

Unfortunately, not every certification has a database of all of the certified products or businesses they've worked with or keeps it up to date effectively if they do have it. This is particularly true of the smaller certifying bodies, especially the ones that want to be a sort of invisible layer of protection for the consumer, though that does tend to defeat some of the point of using them as a trustworthy third-party validation.

Step 4: Consider Reaching Out to the Certification Body

If a product is claiming a certification, or a business is claiming to have earned validation, but you can't find a way to verify that with the certifying body, you might consider just reaching out to them. A lot of these certifying groups will have some kind of contact form or email address – or even just a telephone number – that you can use to contact them. You may be able to reach out to them and ask about the validation status of a product or company you want to learn about.

Obviously, this is a lot more work than being able to just find a company name in a web-based database of validated businesses. But that might be your only option if there isn't an accessible way to look up the information yourself.

You can also use this method if you've found a product that is claiming a certification but you're skeptical as to whether or not they actually have that certification. If someone is claiming Fairtrade or B Corp, for example, and you can't find them in the list, you might be able to reach out and talk to the certifying body about it. Maybe the records are out of date, and a name was changed but not updated. Or, maybe there's a scam afoot, and the certifying body will draft a legal notice when they get off the horn with you.

Do You Need to Validate an Eco-Friendly Certification?

All of this might lead you to a big question: Do you even need to do this legwork yourself?

In many cases, the answer is no. Ideally, a certification becomes recognizable and trustworthy enough that it is enforced through its own weight. Fairtrade has reached this point, while a lot of smaller certifications have not.

The proliferation of different organizations offering certifications is good in that they can put more pressure on different businesses across different industries, but it also tends to divide that trust and makes it easier for the less valuable – or downright meaningless – certifications to slip in unnoticed.

As a consumer, if it's not one of the bigger certifications, you can just use your best judgment about what it means. If you're a business owner looking to vet a supply line, you should give it more scrutiny. Either way, if you want apparel or other customized items, you can work with us. Here at Ethix, we take great pride in being very transparent with everything in our shop, so if you have any questions, please let us know.