Friday, April 3, 2009

ULS Certification Program Announced

Earth friendly. Recyclable. Environmentally safe. Biodegradable. Compostable. The list of marketing claims and superlatives seems to get bigger and more confusing daily.

To help consumers make more informed decisions about products and packages, we've created a Sustainable Products Certification Program that allows companies to feature the ULS logo on their packages if they can prove significant reductions in material and energy consumption, and their marketing claims meet FTC guidelines for environmental statements.

You can also read about the program in the just-released April-May-June 2009 newsletter. It also includes Spring Cleaning Tips, an editorial on the importance of facts rather than faith, and a roundup of interesting product trends in sustainability.

Learn more at www.use-less-stuff.com.

3 comments:

Regina Hart said...

As a recent reader of "Use Less Stuff", I was pleased to discover your web site. Likewise, I thought the USL Certification Program was a great idea. However, I was dismayed to see that one of your first three certified products is packaged water. Talk about unnecessary consumption! What about the environmental costs to procure, ship, and package the water? It would be much more sensible to encourage people to drink their own, locally-produced tap water and to carry it with them in a reusable container.

Anonymous said...

I am a Christian Service coordinator, and am always looking for information to let the people I serve recieve info about reducing, reusing and returning for futher use by manufactures, thanks for this keep the updates coming.

Bob Lilienfeld, Editor said...

The issue of bottled water is a big one, and I agree that drinking from the tap or fountain, or refilling an existing bottle, is the way to go both environmentally and economically. However, for those people who insist on bringing along new 8-12 oz. bottles, a switch to flexible pouches will significantly reduce waste.

This issue also raises another big ULS point: it's not the package that we should generally worry about, it's the product! By drinking from the tap, you use NO packaging at all, which is always better than any type of reduced package.