Good Environmental Choice Australia

Good Environmental Choice Australia standards are aimed at providing a best practice environmental benchmark for the Australian market. Certification to the voluntary environmental labeling standards provides to the manufacturer, an environmental summary of the product's performance, a guideline of key environmental loads that management should be considering with regard to environmental decisions in their product's development, as well as market recognition. It is therefore important that the voluntary environmental labeling standards are both credible and set independently.

The unique approach of the Australian Ecolabel Program is that the ecolabel and certification process is based on the real environmental impacts of a product or service. The program is concerned with the real environmental loads of operations. It is possible that a company which has an extensive range of environmental management tools will not be able to achieve certification, however a company which may have no environmental management policies receives certification because of preferable levels of environmental load by their product. In the end, it is only real environmental loads that count.

Potential participants to this program should review the standards section to check the current state of the standard and key criteria. Certification of products and services is based on the "Rules Governing the Award of a Good Environmental Choice Eco-Label". These rules make key references to the environmental standards criteria under each product category. Copies of this document can be obtained by contacting our office.

The Australian Ecolabel Program provided by Good Environmental Choice Australia Ltd (GECA) utilises standards of environmental performance for different product sectors to verify product compliance for the ecolabel. The standards are developed using a public procedure as outlined on the Standards Development Page. 

These standards are the key benchmarks which determine whether a product or service can be awarded the Good Environmental Choice Ecolabel. Criteria are selected and evaluation methodologies developed under the direction of the Standards Development Committee of Good Environmental Choice Australia. As a rule, criteria are developed using best available scientific information, stakeholder consultation, government consultation, industry consultation and consultation with other ecolabeling schemes internationally.

A cradle-to-cradle methodology is employed where possible to select  the main areas of environmental stress and define suitable criteria for judging environmental performance.

Good Environmental Choice Australia seeks to distinguish and reward those producers and service providers that have improved their environmental performance, and provide an environmentally preferable product or service, from those that do not. The certification process is a comprehensive environmental impact and performance evaluation of a product or service and the associated production processes. The emphasis on actual environmental load as opposed to environmental management is an approach markedly different from those developing Environmental Management Systems. Environmental Management Systems are largely an administrative methodology and not awarded based on environmental performance. A certified Environmental Management System is not an indicator of environmental performance while Australian Environmental Choice Certification is designed to meet this purpose.