Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Certifiably Sustainable?: The Role of Third-Party Certification Systems: Report of a Workshop Surveying the Landscape: Certiication Schemes for Sustainable Products and Services Derek Vollmer The National Academies The ield of certiication standards and ecolabels has grown substan- tially since the early 1990s and now encompasses numerous complex issues, from labor and production processes to lifecycle and end-use con- siderations. However, like the diverse products and services which exist in today’s marketplace, these new standards and labels present consumers and buyers with a surfeit of options which can lead to confusion. Additionally, existing certiication schemes are not uniform, nor are they immune to competing and sometimes false claims which, at best, contribute to “green noise” and consumer fatigue, and at worst, undermine the efforts which do contribute to environmental and social improvements. Just as there is no precise technical deinition of sustainability, there is no precise set of metrics or immutable standards on which certiication schemes might be based. Instead, as this ield matures and advances, there is increasing evidence of what works and why, and where there is room for improvement. This paper attempts to analyze the vast ield of certiication as an approach to sustainability, and in particular it considers the dimensions of sustainability being certiied; how certiication standards are developed and implemented; impacts to producer communities, businesses, consumers, and the environ- ment, and; future areas for potential growth. DIMENSIONS AND SECTORS BEING CERTIFIED Ecolabels trace their history to Germany’s “Blue Angel” label, intro- duced in 1978. As the term ecolabel implies, it was developed to communi- cate that a product or service has “environmentally friendly” characteristics. 105