Apostolos Raftopoulos, President of the Union of Working Consumers of Greece (EEKE), discusses how the BioReCer project strengthens certifications to enhance consumer trust in bio-based products.
The European bioeconomy is rapidly evolving, with bio-based products playing a crucial role in promoting sustainability and reducing environmental impact. However, consumer trust remains a significant challenge due to unclear environmental claims and inconsistent certification schemes.
To address this, the BioReCer project aims to enhance certification frameworks, ensuring greater transparency, traceability, and sustainability in the bio-based sector.
In this interview, EEKE’s Apostolos Raftopoulos shares his insights on the importance of certifications in the European bioeconomy. He discusses how strengthened certification standards can provide consumers with credible assurances regarding the sustainability, origin, and ethical standards of bio-based products.
Raftopoulos also highlights the role of consumer associations in educating the public, promoting responsible policies, and combating greenwashing.
How do you assess the importance of certifications for consumers in the context of the European bioeconomy? Do you believe that new criteria could actually improve consumer trust in bio-based products?
The proliferation of unclear or unproven positive environmental impact notifications regarding product and service production and/or consumption has led to consumer scepticism and confusion in many EU countries, including Greece.
To face this, the EU competent authority has adopted the directive aiming to Empower consumers for the green transition. The directive interdicts generic environmental labelling like “environmentally friendly” or “eco” without supporting evidence.
The new legislation aims to enhance the accuracy and reliability of product and service labelling, ensuring that suppliers cannot make unsubstantiated claims about the environmental impact of their products and their production process.
In the Union of Working Consumers of Greece, we firmly think that certifications are essential in the European bioeconomy and its ecosystem.
They may provide consumers with credible references regarding the sustainability, origin, and traceability of bio-based products. Such certification may serve as institutional indicators that products meet established environmental and ethical standards, thus constructively influencing purchasing decisions and fostering market growth for sustainable goods and services.
At EEKE, we are perplexed by the fact that existing certification schemes are often put under question because of the complexity and variability of bio-based value chains, especially in the case that they contain residual feedstock and waste.
So, the BioReCer project, to address these problems, tries to assess and enhance current certification schemes by introducing new criteria according to the EU sustainability goals.
We are supporting guidelines for certifying the sustainability, origin, tracking, and traceability of biological resources, ensuring their applicability both within the EU and, if possible, globally. The integration of new criteria will make certifications reflect more exactly the sustainability performance of bio-based products, and so it will enhance consumer trust.
In EEKE, we hope and expect this improvement will increase the added value, usage, and social acceptance of bio-based products. Also, we feel that it will support the transition to a circular bio-based economy that delivers substantial environmental and economic benefits.
The transition to a circular bioeconomy requires close collaboration among various stakeholders. What role do consumer associations currently play or should play in promoting greater awareness and education of consumers regarding the sustainability of bio-based products?
Consumer associations have an important role to play in the promotion of a circular bioeconomy in a lot of complementary ways: a) education of consumers, b) endorsement of certification schemes, c) indicating supportive policies, and d) promoting collaboration among stakeholders. Their impact on the adoption of sustainable bio-based products and services is crucial.
Consumer associations can play an important role in the transition to a circular bioeconomy in the following fields:
- Consumers’ education: Consumer associations can develop, implement, disseminate and evaluate educational materials about the benefits of bio-based products, focusing on their environmental advantages and impact on sustainability. This type of education empowers consumers to make rational decisions, fostering a market shift towards more sustainable choices.
- Promotion of certification schemes: By endorsing, implementing and explaining certification schemes, consumer associations can help consumers identify sustainable products and trust relevant suppliers. Further initiatives like the BioReCer project align with EU sustainability goals. These improved additional certifications serve as standard criteria for consumers’ rational behaviour.
- Promoting complementary policy actions: Based on their experience, consumer associations can define public policies that support the growth and implementation of sustainable practices within the bioeconomy. Their involvement will contribute to representing consumer interests in policy-making processes and structures, producing regulations that promote transparency and sustainability.
- Facilitating stakeholder collaboration and networking: Being intermediaries between consumers, industry, and policymakers, consumer associations are facilitating social dialogue and collaboration. This ensures that consumer perspectives are organically contributing to the development of sustainable bio-based products and that appropriate information is disseminated to the consumers.
The BioReCer project aims to strengthen certifications and combat greenwashing. How do you think consumer associations can contribute to ensuring that companies genuinely adopt sustainable practices and do not exploit certifications in a misleading way?
Consumer associations are tools for minimising the bio misleading of consumers, commonly known as greenwashing.
Certifications serve as necessary tools to validate the sustainability and authenticity of products and services because they provide consumers with assurance that the product’s certification meets given environmental and ethical standards.
However, the effectiveness of certifications depends on the credibility of the certification procedure used as well as the manager of the procedure. Weak or superficial certification schemes can be exploited by suppliers to greenwash their products and systematically mislead consumers.
The BioReCer project, which aims to assess and enhance current certification schemes for biological resources in line with new EU sustainability goals, will ensure corporate accountability and transparency on behalf of the suppliers and will contribute to the following:
- Ensuring genuinely sustainable practices: Bridging the existing gap between regulatory frameworks and consumer interests in every EU country. Also, they can press the suppliers to adopt sustainable practices and not exploit certifications in a misleading way.
- Support for integrated certification standards: mobilising public support for the elaboration and implementation of stringent certification standards in accordance with the existing and/or planned comprehensive sustainability criteria, such as those proposed by BioReCer. By contributing to policy dialogues and standardisation of processes, they can ensure that certifications are not superficial marketing items but reflect genuinely sustainable production practices.
- Monitoring and reporting: By actively and continuously monitoring corporate bio practices and reporting discrepancies between a company’s announcements and its actual environmental impact, consumer associations can hold companies accountable for their performance. They can publish specialised reports and disseminate alerts to inform consumers about suppliers that practice greenwashing actions and discourage such practices.
- Consumer education and awareness: Educating consumers on the importance of certifications and ways to distinguish between credible and misleading announcements empowers consumers to make rational choices. Consumer associations can develop various educational campaigns and raise resources to develop awareness about the importance of authentic sustainability certifications.
- Collaboration with regulatory bodies: By working closely with regulatory authorities, consumer associations can contribute to the improvement and actual implementation of laws that impose transparency and accuracy in sustainability reporting. Further, their experience can provide insights and facts that contribute to the adjustment of the actual regulatory framework in every country.
- Promotion of transparency and traceability: Encouraging suppliers to adopt transparent practices and effective traceability systems ensures that sustainability announcements can be tested and verified. Consumer associations can advocate for the integration introduction and integral use of advanced tracking technologies to enhance the holistic credibility of certifications.
- Support for sustainable consumer choices: By endorsing products and suppliers that adhere to functional sustainability practices, consumer associations can influence market tendencies and patterns. They can create platforms and/or certification marks that help consumers identify real, sustainable products, thus promoting ethical consumption.
As the bioeconomy continues to grow, strengthening certification schemes remains essential in ensuring consumer trust and market integrity for bio-based products.
By enhancing transparency, traceability, and sustainability, BioReCer plays a key role in reinforcing the credibility of eco-friendly solutions.
With robust certifications, informed consumers, and clear regulations, the bio-based sector can thrive.
Acknowledgments
The project BioReCer (No 101060684) has received funding from the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
This article is part of the communication activities carried out by Cittadinanzattiva/Active Citizenship Network in the context of the EU-funded project BioReCer (Biological Resources Certifications Schemes) with the support of INNOVATION NEWS NETWORK.
For more information, visit the project website at https://biorecer.eu, and watch the project video for a quick overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi5CVZpkV2k,
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