First steps taken in better online choice of sustainable items

Cross-industry collaboration to digitize sustainable labels and features

Bol.com wants to help consumers in their online search for items produced with care for people, the environment and animals. To take the next steps in this ambition, the store came together with various chain parties from the retail industry, suppliers of quality marks, automation and information organizations. With a number of these parties, a pilot is started in which article data on sustainable quality marks in the product group ‘personal care’ are exchanged through one central database: GS1 Data Source. Online retailers can use this information from the data pool and automatically link it to the products on offer in their web stores. In time, this will enable consumers to make better-informed choices about sustainability, just as they can in physical stores.

In May, bol.com called on the e-commerce sector, producers and providers of quality marks to join forces in digitizing sustainable quality marks. Following this call, the store together with FSC Netherlands, GS1 Netherlands, Milieu Centraal, Max Havelaar Foundation, Thuiswinkel.org and Procter & Gamble discussed the opportunities and challenges of a more conscious lifestyle for consumers in Circl, the circular clubhouse in Amsterdam.

Challenge of unity of digital offerings
Henk Hofstede, sector banker Retail at ABN-AMRO, attended the session and underscored the urgency of the initiative: “Several studies show that consumers are shopping more and more consciously[1] and that sustainability features of an item are weighing more and more heavily in the consumer’s choice of an item[2].” Bol.com wants to respond to this, but there is no standard or umbrella digital database from which webshops can extract this sustainable information. This makes it impossible for the store to add sustainability features to items on a large scale and they are currently forced to manually link the labels to the items in the web store. This is a time-consuming and error-prone task.

Technology makes the world more sustainable
During the meeting, the parties quickly reached consensus on the use of GS1 Netherlands’ data pool. Although there are still organizational and process challenges, the use of technology is a promising approach. Frits van de Bos, Manager Innovation at GS1 Netherlands: “Companies can enter all the details of each item into the database, including the sustainability characteristics, so that these are automatically listed with sustainable items in webshops.” Therein also lies a challenge. For example, with the FSC® label, the verification is different than with other labels. In order to gain insight into these challenges for the future, a pilot is first started in which a selection of sustainable hallmarks of articles in the product group ‘personal care’ is digitized. During a next ’round table’ in mid-January, the parties will meet again and the first agreements will be put on paper.

Online opportunities sustainable story
The parties agree: with regard to making conscious choices, online retail has a prominent role to play in properly informing consumers. Ellen de Lange, Thuiswinkel.org branch organisation: “It’s good that bol.com has started this initiative to make quality marks digitally available. It is important that consumers can easily make a sustainable choice online. There is often a lot of space online to tell the full sustainable story of an article.”

The best way is collaboration
A store like bol.com cannot tell the sustainability story alone. Jori Ebskamp, responsible for sustainability projects at bol.com: “We don’t think it’s up to us to determine what is a sustainable article and what is not. We need each other to bring order to the online jungle of sustainable articles. Webshops cannot do without the independent knowledge of parties such as Milieu Centraal. And articles with the Fairtrade hallmark depend on webshops to tell the product’s sustainable story. Moreover, there is more than just a label. There may still be a sustainable story to tell if, for example, the ‘whole cycle’ of a product is examined. And producers like Procter & Gamble have that insight. Only through collaboration can bol.com provide insight into the sustainable characteristics of thousands and in time perhaps millions of items.”

[1]Sustainable Dossier 2017: The study states that 48% of consumers surveyed pay attention to sustainability when purchasing a product. In 2013, only 30% thought this was important.

[2]https://www.nu.nl/eten-en-drinken/5024177/artikelen-met-keurmerken-steeds-vaker-verkocht.html