Environmental Labels and Declarations in the Agri-Food Sector

In these last years, the labels and environmental communications have received a great deal of attention in the international scene in order to implement a policy which can encourage producers to improve the environmental performance of their products thus stimulating consumers to give up their habit of making purchases. These labels/declarations encourage the supply and the demand of those products and services able to cause lower damage to the environment stimulating a process of continuous environmental improvement guided by the market. Given the presence of different national systems of environmental labelling and in order to bring into line the methodologies to be adopted, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has elaborated and regulated three types of labels/environmental declarations: Type I, II and III; there is another category which has not been regulated by the ISOs and which has been defined as “environmental labels of type IV”. In this chapter, there is a critical review of the most significant literature about environmental labels, referring in particular to food products; the aim is to investigate the role that environmental labels have played in the behaviour of consumers and of producers.