Greenpeace Gütezeichen-Guide

In Kürze: In 2018, Greenpeace Austria checked 26 (of around 100) food quality seals for transparency and impact on sustainability mainly in environment, but also social criteria and animal protection.

Greenpeace in Österreich has issued a quality seal check ("Zeichen-Tricks. Der Gütezeichen-Guide von Greenpeace in Österreich") in October 2018. From about 100 quality seals in the food sector in Austria, Greenpeace has checked 26 of them closely.

In Austria, there is a difference between "Gütesiegel" (seal of approval), which have official restrictions in law and "Gütezeichen" (sign of approval, quality mark), which have regulations defined by its issuing organization. The difference for consumers isn't there, since not one is better than the other.

Greenpeace has looked out for the following criteria:

1. Strict and clear definitions and criteria concerning the impact on environment, people and animals
   1. Criteria need to be found transparently and easy on the internet
   2. Criteria need to be defined in a transparent process with independent parties involved
   3. Criteria must refer to already existing products and standards and cannot inherently include improvements in the future
   4. Criteria are constantly checked and improved
2. External, independent certification and regular, strict check of criteria, clear rules for loss of certification when violating the criteria

Greenpeace had a focus on the impact on environment, but also social criteria (with products from environmental countries) and animal protection was considered.

Quality marks

In general, quality marks can be misleading, when they are boosting sales by suggesting good quality while not guaranteeing best criteria for certification. Greenpeace Austria has even called some quality marks as "counterproductive" in terms of sustainability. (source)

Possible values

The value "XX" (not applicable) is used for all other products not part of the check, it is not part of Greenpeace's rating scale, but only used in this wiki.

Sources

• Page about the certificate check (in German) from Greenpeace Austria
• Link to certificate check (PDF, in German)

Helping pages

• Template:LabelCheckGreenpeaceAT2018
• Property:LabelCheckValue

See also

• Palm oil