ECOS | Environmental Coalition on Standards

30 October 2017

Preparation of international standard on Chain of Custody

ECOS was recently approved as liaison organisation to the ISO Project Committee 308 which works on a horizontal standard on Chain-of-Custody. This standard sets out to harmonise the terminology and basic requirements used for the existing and future chain of custody systems across numerous sectors (such as food, consumer goods, or construction). ECOS participated in the second plenary meeting of this project committee was held in London on the 3rd and 4th of October.

Chain of Custody is key to ensure that the specific product characteristics claimed by producers and manufacturers such as origin or sustainability features are credible and verifiable. Does your organic cotton t-shirt truly come from organic cotton fields? This is what chain of custody is about. A chain-of-custody system provides a framework to document and follow the product from the raw material to the shelf all along the supply chain (and potentially even beyond!).

Within this project committee, ECOS’ main objective is to make sure the standard developed does not harmonise to the lowest common denominator. Our goal is to ensure that that environmental claims on products based on this international standard can be trusted by consumers and be applied to products that are less damaging to the environment than competing products.

For more information, feel free to contact ECOS Policy Officer Mathilde Crêpy.

ECOS is co-funded by the European Commission and EFTA Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EISMEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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