The Nordic Swan Ecolabel sets tough requirements
The Nordic Swan Ecolabel makes it easy for consumers, businesses, and the public sector to contribute to the green transition. The Nordic Swan Ecolabel takes a holistic approach and considers all relevant environmental parameters throughout the entire product life cycle.
Promoting the circular economy
Circular economy is about reusing and recycling the materials from which our products are made, instead of using new raw materials from nature. Therefore, it is important to look at how the products are designed and at the chemicals that are included in them. We need to prevent waste by ensuring high-quality products with a long lifespan – and by simplifying repair.
Promoting the circular economy
The Nordic Swan Ecolabel's requirements have a long lifespan as a goal in order to reduce the need to manufacture new products and thus also reduce the use of new resources. The Nordic Swan Ecolabel's requirements aim to ensure that resources are returned to new cycles and that materials and products are kept in circulation with as high a value and quality as possible.
Here you can read more about the Nordic Swan Ecolabel and circular economy.
Requirements to preserve biodiversity
Everything that is produced burdens nature, in one way or another. Therefore, the Nordic Swan Ecolabel sets requirements for how raw materials are to be extracted and used. The goal is to counteract the loss of species, prevent the deterioration of ecosystems and not to extract more raw materials than nature can renew. The Nordic Swan Ecolabel also sets other requirements that help preserve biodiversity. The requirements vary depending on the product group.
Here you can read more about the Nordic Swan Ecolabel and biodiversity.
Chemical requirements protect the environment and people
The Nordic Swan Ecolabel is a powerful tool for limiting harmful chemicals. This applies to both environmentally harmful chemicals – for example, substances that are toxic to aquatic organisms or that are difficult to degrade in nature – and chemicals that are hazardous to health.
The overall strategy of the Nordic Swan Ecolabel is to exclude substances based on their properties. This means, for example, substances that are environmentally harmful, carcinogenic, mutagenic or harmful to reproduction. For example, the Nordic Swan Ecolabel has long banned all organic fluorochemicals (PFAS) in the products where they may be used – and thus excludes the more than 10,000 chemicals that are included in this group.
The Nordic Swan Ecolabel's requirements are based on the so-called precautionary principle. This means that Nordic Ecolabelling, the organisation behind the Nordic Swan Ecolabel, can act faster than the legislation and ban chemicals if there are reasonable suspicions that they have harmful effects on the environment and/or human health.
Here you can read more about the Nordic Swan Ecolabel and chemicals.