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The Swan Eco-label
The Swan is the official Nordic eco-label. The purpose of the Swan label is to have a voluntary common Nordic ecolabelling which contributes to reducing the impact of everyday consumption on the environment. The Swan ecolabel examines the environmental effect of goods and services during the entire life cycle from raw ingredients till waste. It places stringent demands on climate and the environment but also requirements on function and quality. The vision behind the Swan is of a sustainable society with sustainable consumption.
The Swan label will help to guide Nordic consumers and purchasers so that they have a real possibility of buying 'green' and thus contributing to improving the environment. At the same time there is a desire to encourage producers to manufacture environmentally-friendly products.
Today more than 60 product groups now bear the Swan and the number of licenses is increasing greatly all the time. About 1900 licenses have been issued which include more than 5000 products.
The work is co-ordinated by the Nordic Ecolabelling Board (NMN), which decides which product groups will be covered by the Swan and the requirements that must be met. Nordic expert groups draw up proposals for the criteria and the different countries' ecolabelling secretariats process the licence applications and issue the licences. In Denmark and Iceland the Swan ecolabel comes under the environment sector while in the other Nordic countries it falls under the consumer sector.
All national ecolabelling secretariats work in parallel with the Swan and the European ecolabel the Flower. Ecolabelling in the Nordic countries has a turnover today of about DKK 90 million and employs about 100 people More than 2/3 of the income comes from license charges and application fees from businesses. The Swan is responsible for more than 95% of these incomes while the rest comes from Nordic producers with the EU Flower.
The Swan ecolabel was established in 1989 by the consumer sector of the Nordic Council of Ministers, but responsibility passed to the environmental sector in 2006. Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden were party to the Swan co-operation from the start, while Denmark joined in 1998. The annual grant from the Nordic Council of Ministers to NMN in 2010 is about DKK 2.5 million.
