Greening the networked economy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 180

Table 7.1. Number of environmental labels for
different products or categories on the Dutch
market in 2006

Product/category Number of labels

Food general 35

Meat 14

Fish 3

Eggs 7

Textile 10

Packaging 13

Recycling 29

Travelling 2

Electricity 9

Gardening 2

Note: Duplications not excluded.
Source: http://www.keurmerken.info, accessed Septem-
ber 2006.

official labels that refer partly or completely to environmental quali-
ties of products or production processes. Besides that, more than 110
visualisations or logos were identified that referred to green or environ-
mental qualities, as well as some fifty trade names with 'eco', 'bio' or
'nature'. Table 7.1 provides data on the amount of green or ecolabels
for different product categories in the Netherlands in 2006, illustrating
the diversity in numbers for different product categories. 27 Figure 7.2
provides an indication of the rapid growth in environmental labelling
in the 1990s, by showing the increase of (especially local, national,
regional) environmental labels, certificates and standards on the Euro-
pean tourist market from 1990 to 2000. Although a significant increase
took place in that decade, in the first years of the new millennium some
consolidation and integration of various labelling systems took place,
resulting in some fifty-four ecolabels in 2005.
The differences in these ecolabelling and product-information
programs deserve some further attention. Most advanced industri-
alised states have now one or more state-recognised and sanctioned

27

See http://www.eco-labels.org, a Web site of the U.S. Consumer Union, for an
overview of environmental labels on the U.S. agro-food market. This U.S. Web
site mentions forty environmental labels for meat, two for fish and thirty-one
for eggs (accessed September 2006).