Summary of the Challenge
The way products and services are certified gives consumers important information when they are making purchasing decisions. In the UK, there are no uniform certification schemes when it comes to sustainability.
Certification often demonstrates commitment to quality and safety and that products have passed specific performance and quality assurance tests. There is a burgeoning industry of ‘sustainability consultants’ who advise on sustainability practices. All of these activities rely on the claim that they are ‘certified’ as credible, trustworthy and independent markers of quality.
However, what is their effectiveness? There is a need in the UK to have sustainability certification to ensure that products and manufacturers have positive sustainability credentials.
Our Response
We want to use South Yorkshire as a test bed to conduct research to improve our understanding of sustainability certificates and their social, economic and political significance.
We will conduct research that will include interviews and roundtable discussions in collaboration with a range of local actors to look at the social, economic and political impacts that certification schemes could have.
Our findings will produce recommendations for how certification schemes may be designed to improve regulatory outcomes in the UK.
Research will ask three core questions:
- What evidence underpins sustainability certification schemes, and is that evidence contested?
- How do certification schemes get produced? Who are the key organisations and actors that influence them in relevant supply chains?
- What is the evidence that certification schemes work, and how can they be improved?
