Five things to know about certification standards
5 MINUTE READ | BY JO MILLER | 24 APRIL 2024
Credible certification standards and ecolabels provide a powerful foundation to deliver impactful sustainability commitments but are not immune to criticism. Therefore, layering certification with your own values and policies is essential.
Earlier this month Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) found itself in the spotlight after a report by Earthsight, an investigative NGO, accused BCI-certified cotton producers in Brazil of deforestation. The challenges faced by BCI bare significant similarities to many critical reports published about other sustainability certification programmes, including the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), where until recently I was head of PR and communications.
My initial response reading these reports is empathy for the committed staff responding to this criticism. In my experience, people at these organisations believe whole-heartedly in the role of standards and certification in driving positive change, for which there is ample evidence. But this conviction can be tested by criticism that exposes what can seem like obvious shortcomings.
It’s helpful to remember that certification standards are, by necessity, designed to be a ‘one size fits all’ approach. They seek to broker agreement between a broad spectrum of stakeholders: from brand, retail, and supply chain businesses through to consumers, scientists, conservationists, campaigners, and politicians. By convening an industry around a common set of principles, these standards drive best practice and improvements at a scale that couldn’t be achieved by any one company acting alone. The problem, however, is that it’s virtually impossible for these standards to meet the expectations of all their stakeholders.
In this context, here are five observations, based on my experience, to help you get the most out of certification standards when setting and communicating your sustainability commitments.
1. Market demand is a powerful incentive
Certification standards are designed to drive positive impact through growing market demand. The more that companies require certification as part of their procurement policies, the more that suppliers are incentivised to meet these standards. Scaling this demand in turn lifts performance across the sector helping to improve sustainability.
Consumer demand for more sustainable products is an important driving force behind these procurement policies, but so is growing corporate commitments to ESG and sustainability. For companies to make and deliver on these commitments, there needs to be enough certified supply, which takes me to my next point.
2. A high bar, but not too high
Sustainability certification standards are typically set at a level that reflects ‘international widely accepted best practice’. This is a high bar, which can require many years of investment and improvement to meet, but it’s not so high that it alienates the industry, reducing the potential for positive impacts and preventing a scheme from ever meeting a critical volume of certified supply. It’s aspirational, but achievable, meaning there will always be room for critics to argue that the bar for certification should be higher.
3. There’s almost always room for improvement
By necessity, on the surface, certification is binary. A company is either certified, and allowed to use the ecolabel, or it’s not. However, dig deeper and it’s far more complicated. Standards set a minimum passing score but allow room for improvement as ‘conditions of certification’. This means that while some certified companies reach the highest score and are certified without conditions, most can still do more to improve their sustainability.
Conditional certification has a positive impact over time, for example, requiring certified companies to undertake research or invest in new technologies, with the biggest impacts coming from those that initially just scrape through certification but then commit to improve to maintain certification (and buyers demanding certification). However, this also creates the opportunity for criticism.
4. Certification is based on evidence
The international credible standards membership body (ISEAL), together with UN guidelines, require credible standards setters to be inclusive, and therefore open to any qualifying organisation that voluntarily puts itself forward to be assessed to their standard. This ensures fair and equal access to the opportunities that certification offers, with decisions based on evidence, not values or past behaviour. However, it means that standards setters often lack the opportunity to exclude controversial operations from their programme.
Reconciling the reputation of certification with the need to be inclusive and recognise improvements evidenced through science, is a huge challenge.
5. Transparency allows for scrutiny
Last but by no means least, most schemes require certified companies to publish the evidence and third-party audits on which certification decisions are based. This makes huge amounts of data on these companies available for public scrutiny. Media and NGO investigations often draw on this data, putting these companies in the spotlight.
In conclusion, credible international standards setters (ISEAL members), including BCI, MSC, FSC, Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade provide rigorous and comprehensive assessment of supplier’s sustainability according to a set of highly consulted, researched, and scrutinised standards. They provide a recognised, credible solution and substantiation for sustainability commitments and claims that helps to lift performance across an entire sector. However, they are not free from challenge or criticism.
By understanding these limitations, companies can incorporate standards into their sourcing policies taking advantage of the efficiencies, scrutiny, and consumer recognition that these labels offer, and contributing to industry-wide improvements. However, companies should also incorporate their own checks and values. As the BCI example has shown for fashion brands including H&M and Zara, certification alone does not prevent criticism.
If you’d like to talk through how you’re thinking about aligning with different sustainability certifications as part of your overall strategy, please feel free to get in touch.
Jo Miller
Senior Consultant. Sustainability Communications
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