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The Importance Of Ecolabels in Sustainable Production and Consumption:
Turkish Environmental Labelling System
Criterion 7. Suitability for Use
Criterion 8. Informing the consumer
Criterion 9. Information Shown on the Environmental Label
Evaluation and Conclusion
In recent years, environmental issues have drawn increasing attention, along
with the idea that consumer preferences can actually improve the performance
of the production system as a whole. The majority of the consumers express
that, among the products having the same price, they will prefer the ones
having a lower impact on the environment and that the eco-labels are one
of the most important signals given to the market to help this process. In this
context, the role of eco-labels is seen to be an effective tool that provides
clear information to consumers and allows manufacturers to show the ‘green
identity’ of their products (Iraldo et al., 2020).
Encouraging the spread of environmental sensitivity among consumers
will make significant contributions to the development of eco-label systems.
In addition, increasing the market share of eco-labeled products, that is,
mainstreaming the eco-labels to as many products as possible, emerges as a
key to making those products more attractive for conscious consumers who are
getting more and more in number each day. In this way, it will be possible to turn
to “sustainable” products for a large number of manufacturers. Establishing
the environmental policies that aim to improve the competitiveness of
green products (and producers) with particular reference to the life-cycle
oriented schemes and initiatives such as product environmental footprints or
environmental product declarations, will not only make a great contribution to
the environmental basis of sustainable development but it will also promote
the eco-labels’ longevity and provide for ethical guarantees in the supply
chain (Iraldo et al., 2020).
It is believed that the behavioral orientation of the consumers is also
important in consumers’ adoption of eco-labels given for the products and
services and in ensuring an increase in the orientation towards such products
and services with eco-labels, and that this issue should be studied. In this
context, eco-label applications based on accurate, transparent and scientific
principles are gaining great importance. As is known, the extension of
circular economy in various fields considerably and the increase in the use
of applications i.e. eco-label has led to an increase in the implementation
of “greenwashing” which involves the abuse of the concept of green and
environment-friendly products. Therefore, wide-spreading the science-based
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