Guidelines for Providing Product Sustainability Information

This report provides structured guidance for communicating product sustainability information to consumers in order to support informed purchasing, use, and disposal decisions while addressing issues of unclear, misleading, or inconsistent claims. It is designed for value chain and public sector professionals across all regions and organisational sizes, with the objective of enabling effective and trustworthy communication and fostering global consistency in sustainability information practices. The document focuses on influencing consumer behaviour towards more sustainable consumption patterns, while recognising that responsibility is shared across all stakeholders in the value chain. It establishes a framework based on fundamental principles such as reliability, relevance, clarity, transparency, and accessibility, alongside aspirational principles including behavioural influence, comparability, and collaboration. The guidance adopts a life cycle perspective and incorporates environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability to improve the credibility, consistency, and usefulness of product-related information.