On October 19, 2016, the Green Product Mark certification scheme of TÜV Rheinland was awarded the GENICES Certificate at the annual general conference of the Global Ecolabelling Network (GEN) held in Kiev, Ukraine.

GENICES, the GEN Internationally Coordinated Ecolabelling System, is a peer review process that benchmarks GEN members as a basis for mutual trust and confidence, after which they can provide input into the standards/specifications to be included in the common internationally accepted criteria database. 

The purpose of GENICES is to:

• Allow new ecolabelling programs to start quickly with criteria already in place for many product categories and with potential income from products that are internationally traded and certified elsewhere;
• Be of interest to large multinationals in terms of facilitating, simplifying and making the entire ecolabelling process more cost-effective;
• Enable companies with environmentally friendly products and services to enter export markets more easily and quickly;
• "Share" the costs of criteria development and review where harmonisation or development of a common criteria is a common objective and task;
• Raise the significance and value of the GEN to members and others; and
• Deal effectively with any undue concerns about trade barriers.

On September 19-20, 2016, Mr Bjorn-Erik Lonn, the incumbent Chairman of GEN, and Ms Eva Eiderström, a member of the GEN Board, led the GENICES onsite assessment taking place in Cologne. The two assessors reviewed the quality management system of Green Product Mark against 15 sets of criteria according to ISO 14024 and ISO/IEC 17065, including the requirements for transparency, accessibility, confidentiality and impartiality. GENICES certification is an important milestone for Green Product Mark, establishing a solid foundation upon which to build its mutual recognition agreement (MRA) partnership network globally.

The Green Product Mark is a type I ecolabelling scheme launched by TÜV Rheinland in 2012 to communicate verifiable and accurate information about the environmental aspects of products. It encourages the demand for and supply of products that cause less stress on the environment. The clients certified by Green Product Mark include multinational brands like Deutsche Telekom, Lenovo, Nestle, Huawei, Kenwood, Samsung, LG.

The GEN is a non-profit association of Type I ecolabelling organisations.  Type I refers to those environmental labelling programmes offering third-party verification and life cycle based environmental performance certification.  The GEN was founded in 1994 to improve, promote, and develop the ecolabelling of products and services.

For more information about TÜV Rheinland Green Product Mark, please visit the webpage of the Green Product Mark certification scheme.

For more information about GENICES system and the Global Ecolabelling Network (GEN), please visit the website of GEN.

(Reference: http://www.globalecolabelling.net/gen-members/genices/ )