A National Strategy for Consumer Product Resource Labelling in Australia

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Summary

This report was commissioned by the Australian Greenhouse Office and was prepared by George Wilkenfeld of George Wilkenfeld & Associates. This report was released in December 2003.

Australia, like many other countries, has a number of separate resource efficiency labels, which inform buyers about the electricity, gas, fuel, water or other resource use of products, vehicles or buildings. Each labelling program has developed independently, as part of different Government and industry programs within, or in a few cases outside Australia. As each program increases its scope and coverage, there is increasing risk of buyer confusion (some products can now carry two or more labels) incompatible technical requirements and unacceptable industry costs.

Conversely, there is potential to increase the impact and cost-effectiveness of all resource labelling systems by addressing more buyers segments, by harmonising visual formats and by streamlining supplier and administrative costs.

The need for a coordinated labelling strategy arises because:

In some cases the one product can carry more than one label, so it is important to avoid confusion and conflict between the labels.
The same householders will come into contact with a succession of resource labels as they purchase successive products, and will instinctively try to interpret labels in similar ways;
As buyers are made more aware of different resource impacts, there is a risk that they will be overwhelmed with information if the modes of communication compete with rather than complement each other;
There is a risk that product suppliers, most of whom have been very cooperative with labelling programs in the past, will be subject to increasing testing, registration and labelling costs, and so will reduce their support for resource labelling.

The report goes on to give 27 recommendations in the areas of:

Resource Labelling Program Management;
Label Scales and Algorithms;
Label Formats;
Supporting Information;
Label Placement.

This page last modified 02 February 2009