UL Environment – Miriam Stevens – 2021

Goals

UL is a premier safety science company that delivers trusted third-party testing, inspection, and certification services to businesses worldwide. UL’s ECOLOGO® program provides independent certification of products to multi-attribute sustainability standards, which set science-driven criteria for health, safety, and environmental preferability. UL enlisted Miriam Stevens to research the latest approaches for evaluating sustainable performance of personal care products and recommend criteria for the update of UL’s personal care products standard under the ECOLOGO® program. 

Solutions

Insights from the following primary and secondary research were incorporated into program recommendations and a preliminary draft of the personal care products standard:

• A gap analysis of existing ECOLOGO® criteria and catalogue of requirements relevant for the revision. Evaluation of the scope and content of comparable programs was also used to identify contemporary approaches to personal care products standards.
• Interviews with internal subject matter experts on developing criteria that are impactful, yet verifiable and achievable in topics ranging from good manufacturing practices to carbon accounting to human and animal welfare.
• An exploratory analysis of restricted ingredient evaluation using UL’s chemical regulatory monitoring software; the outcomes emphasized the benefits of integrating several of UL’s digital tools into the formulation review system and standards development process.

Potential Impact

Consumers and corporations are starting to expect cleaner products and practices of those from whom they purchase. Yet verifying sustainability claims entails vetting products against indicators that are currently challenging to measure or that are just starting to be addressed by product manufacturers.

The criteria and program strategy recommendations Miriam provided will help UL revise the personal care products standard so that it exceeds requirements for multi-attribute (Type I) environmental standards and the ECOLOGO® program meets expectations of the peer review process for the Global Ecolabelling Network as well as new marketplace expectations.