Environmental benefits with the Nordic Swan Ecolabel

For 30 years, the Nordic Swan Ecolabel has influenced industries and companies to turn into a more environmental-friendly production and thus contribute to a more sustainable development. For example, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit the climate change in time, protecting our ecosystems from hazardous chemicals and not least reducing our consumption and use of resources.

 

Here are three examples of how Nordic Swan Ecolabelled products and services contribute to concrete environmental benefits.

 

Climate wise renovation reduces emissions equalling that of all cars in a small town for a whole year

Saving on energy is one of the most important measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming. Therefore, energy efficiency is the focus of Nordic Ecolabelling requirements for renovation of properties. A real energy thief is the housing built during the 1960s–70s. Today, they need to be renovated to become more energy efficient. If they were to be renovated with the Nordic Ecolabelling criteria, it would correspond to reduced carbon dioxide emissions from 57,000 cars over a year.

In addition to energy efficiency improvement of the property's energy consumption, the Nordic Ecolabelling criteria for renovation focus on another important climate hazard: the production of building materials. The criteria require companies to reuse and recover building materials. In this way, companies contribute to a circular economy and recycle resources.

 

1,000 villas consumption is saved with climate wise stores

For a grocery store to be able to become Nordic Swan Ecolabelled, not only a large ecological and ecolabelled range is required. The staff must also chase energy thiefs and use the energy more efficiently. The tough energy requirements of the Nordic Swan Ecolabel have yielded results. In three years, Nordic Swan Ecolabelled stores have reduced their total energy consumption, corresponding to that of more than 1,000 Swedish villas.

 

“Plastic slimming” 4 out of 10 plastic bags

For Samhall, the Nordic Swan Ecolabelling of the company's cleaning service has meant that they have saved almost one fifth of the cleaning chemicals that were previously used. In addition, the proportion of ecolabelled cleaning chemicals has increased from 76% to 83%. This gives a great environmental benefit when Samhall annually cleans an area corresponding to 160,000 football grounds. Another major resource saving is that the proportion of plastic bags that are used for waste baskets has decreased radically. Samhall has been "plastic slimming" with about 37% from one year to another. Four of ten plastic bags have been saved.