What do the ISO standards govern, and why is "Type I / II / III" being retired?

A vocabulary that no longer exists

People describing environmental labels commonly use a three-part shorthand: Type I for third-party multi-criteria ecolabels, Type II for self-declared claims, Type III for environmental product declarations. The vocabulary appears in consultancy reports, procurement specifications, teaching materials and peer-reviewed papers. In those sources it is generally used without qualification, as settled terminology.

That standing was withdrawn in December 2022. The three terms were formally deprecated in the umbrella standard of the series.

ISO 14020:2022, the umbrella standard of the series, retains all three Type terms in its terminology clause solely in order to mark them as inadmissible. Against the preferred term "self-declared environmental claim" it prints DEPRECATED: Type II environmental label; against "ecolabel", DEPRECATED: Type I environmental label; against "environmental product declaration", DEPRECATED: Type III environmental declaration (ISO, 2022, cl. 3.2.6–3.2.8). In ISO terminology practice, "deprecated" is a formal admissibility rating rather than a stylistic preference: the entry is retained in the terminology clause so that a reader encountering the term can locate the preferred equivalent, while the rating itself directs that the term not be used in new text. The one further step available within that practice is removal of the entry from the vocabulary altogether.

The 2026 revisions completed the move. ISO 14024, published on 4 May 2026, is now titled Environmental statements and programmes for products — Ecolabels, replacing Environmental labels and declarations — Type I environmental labelling — Principles and procedures (ISO, 2026a). ISO 14025, published on 24 June 2026, is now Environmental statements and programmes for products — Environmental product declarations (EPDs), replacing Environmental labels and declarations — Type III environmental declarations — Principles and procedures (ISO, 2026b). ISO 14021, published the same day, is Environmental statements and programmes for products — Self-declared environmental claims, having dropped the parenthetical "(Type II environmental labelling)" it had carried since 1999 (ISO, 2026c).

The sections below set out what the series governs, how the Type nomenclature was constituted, what the 2022 and 2026 revisions altered, and what effect the change has had on the instruments, on the binding legislation that refers to them, and on the institutions the standards address.

What the series governs

The ISO 14020 family is administered by ISO/TC 207/SC 3 and addresses product-related environmental communication. It does not certify anything itself; it specifies how programmes making environmental statements should be constructed and operated.

ISO 14020:2022 is the umbrella document. Its scope "establishes principles and specifies general requirements that are applicable to all types of product-related environmental statements and environmental statement programmes" (ISO, 2022). It defines an environmental statement as "information on one or more environmental aspect(s) or environmental impact(s) of a product, which intends to inform an intended audience and intends to influence the market", and treats four instruments as species of that genus: self-declared environmental claims, ecolabels, environmental product declarations, and footprint communications.

ISO 14021:2026 governs self-declared claims — assertions made by the party responsible for the product without independent certification. This standard contains the rules on the Mobius loop and on qualifying recyclability claims, and is accordingly the member of the family whose provisions bear most directly on packaging artwork, the loop and the recyclability claim being marks carried on the pack itself rather than features of a programme's governance.

ISO 14024:2026 governs ecolabelling programmes: voluntary, multiple-criteria, third-party schemes awarding a licence to display a mark to products meeting published criteria.

ISO 14025:2026 governs environmental product declarations: quantified, life-cycle-based disclosures built on product category rules and independently verified.

Three further documents complete the picture. ISO 14026:2017 covers footprint communication. ISO/TS 14027:2017 covers the development of product category rules, and ISO/TS 14029:2022 covers the mutual recognition of environmental product declarations and footprint communication programmes.

The titles of these three documents are not uniform. ISO 14026:2017 and ISO/TS 14027:2017 still carry the older "Environmental labels and declarations —" stem, while ISO/TS 14029:2022 already uses "Environmental statements and programmes for products". The renaming is therefore a rolling revision programme, working through the family document by document as each is reissued, rather than a single coordinated announcement taking effect across the series on one date.

Where the Type nomenclature came from

The Type designations are sometimes described as informal shorthand that grew up around the standards. The documents do not support that description: the terms were formally defined within the standards themselves, as numbered entries in their terminology clauses.

ISO 14024:2018 defines "Type I environmental labelling programme" as a numbered term at clause 3.1 — "voluntary, multiple-criteria-based third party programme that awards a licence…" (ISO, 2018a). ISO 14025:2006 defines "Type III environmental declaration" at clause 3.2 and cites the 1999 editions of ISO 14021 and ISO 14024 as normative references, so the scheme was mutually constituted across the family rather than asserted in any one document (ISO, 2006).

The designations entered the titles of ISO 14021 and ISO 14024 with their 1999 first editions, and remained there for twenty-seven years. The ISO 14025 lineage is slightly different: "Type III" first appeared in the title of a technical report, ISO/TR 14025:2000, and the document became a full International Standard only in 2006.

The standards did not, however, supply a justification for the scheme. ISO 14025:2006's introduction describes Type III declarations without explaining the origin or the logic of the tripartite division. The typology was accordingly stipulated rather than argued: it was defined in the terminology clauses, carried in the titles, and relied on in the normative references, but no published defence of its coherence accompanied it in any of the documents examined for this article. Its authority derived from repetition and institutional weight rather than from a stated rationale.

The absence of a stated rationale bears on what follows, because the criticism the scheme subsequently attracted was directed at its coverage of the field rather than at its wording.

Empirical criticism of the typology

The most systematic empirical critique located for this article is Minkov et al. (2020), who assessed a sample of ecolabels against the series' criteria and reported that "approximately 60% of the explored ecolabels in our sample did not declare any ISO typology, whereas none assigned a type II classification." Two findings are contained in that sentence: a majority of the schemes sampled declared no ISO type at all, and one of the three categories was, within that sample, claimed by no scheme. The authors identified a residual group of "undefined ecolabels" employing "different awarding formats and criteria in combination and hybrid forms that are not recognized and described by ISO or any other observed classification approach", and proposed replacing the three-way scheme with an eighteen-attribute characterisation framework.

The same research group had earlier demonstrated the coverage problem concretely, finding that a prominent multi-attribute certification programme could be classified "neither as a Type I, nor a Type III label" and had an "undefined affiliation in the realm of environmental labels" — though the same authors recommended that the programme work toward ISO 14024 conformance, a recommendation that presupposes the continued applicability of the framework they were criticising (Minkov, Bach and Finkbeiner, 2018).

Related critiques target the underlying procedures rather than the classification. Bratt et al. (2011) assess ecolabelling criteria development from a strategic sustainability perspective, and Bratt et al. (2013) extend the analysis to procurement criteria. Horne (2009) offers a broader structural challenge to the label paradigm.

These criticisms should be set against the state of the wider literature at the same date. Iraldo, Griesshammer and Kahlenborn (2020), introducing the special issue in which Minkov et al. appeared, use the Type vocabulary neutrally and as established methodology. As of 2020, accordingly, the scheme remained ordinary framing in the specialist literature, and the criticism recorded above was not part of a sustained challenge to the typology in the period immediately preceding the deprecation.

What ISO did not do, and what it did alongside

Two qualifications bear on the interpretation of the deprecation, and both count against reading it as a repudiation of the typology.

No published rationale could be located. ISO 14020:2022 contains no explanatory text: the foreword, introduction and the notes to entry at clauses 3.2.6–3.2.8 offer no justification. No ISO news item, committee communication or ISO/TC 207/SC 3 statement addressing the terminology change was found. The most recent ISO news item concerning ISO 14024 dates from the 2018 revision and uses "Type I" freely throughout (ISO, 2018b).

The Type terms were not singled out. ISO 14020:2022 also prints DEPRECATED: environmental claim against the preferred term "environmental statement" at clause 3.2.1. The Type designations were retired inside a systematic vocabulary overhaul that simultaneously replaced "environmental claim" with "environmental statement" and renamed the family's entire title stem. That context bears on interpretation: the pattern is consistent with a routine terminological harmonisation carried out across the family as a whole, rather than with a targeted rejection of the typology, although the standards state neither characterisation of their own. The closest available statement of what the revisions changed comes from the change list in the foreword to ISO 14021:2026, which records that "elements that are common to all the documents on environmental statements developed by ISO/TC 207/SC 3 have been removed and are now in ISO 14020:2022" (reproduced in Certifico, 2026) — an account of architectural consolidation that says nothing about the Type terminology specifically.

Any account of why ISO made the change is therefore inference. The coverage failures documented by Minkov et al. supply a plausible motive; they are not evidence of ISO's reasoning.

What has and has not been retired

What has been retired is the vocabulary, not the distinction. There remain three standards governing three instruments, differentiated exactly as before by who asserts the environmental statement and on what verificatory basis. ISO has renamed the categories; it has not merged or abolished them.

The programme operator for the largest international EPD system characterises the effect as follows: EPDs are "now clearly defined as independently verified LCA-based environmental statements, removing the 'Type I, II, III' classification language", and "neither self-declared environmental claims developed under ISO 14021 nor ecolabels developed under ISO 14024 are considered EPDs or a type of EPD" (EPD International, 2026). The second of those clauses states the substantive effect the programme operator attributes to the renaming. Under the previous vocabulary, three instruments each designated a "type" of a single thing could be read as variants of a common instrument differing only in the rigour of their verification. On the standards' own definitions they are not variants: each is a distinct instrument, differing in who asserts the environmental statement, on what evidential basis, and subject to what form of verification. Naming the instruments after what they are, rather than numbering them within a series, removes the inference that the numbering invited.

Embedding of the terminology in binding instruments

Terminology carried for twenty-seven years in standards, procurement rules and legislation might be expected to be extensively embedded in binding text, so that its retirement would create substantial disruption. Among the instruments examined for this article it is not so embedded, because binding instruments reference the standard numbers rather than the Type labels in the great majority of cases examined. One exception was identified, and it occurs in the instrument most directly concerned with environmental labelling.

Regulation (EU) 2025/40 contains no reference to ISO 14020, 14021, 14024 or 14025, or to the Type nomenclature. PPWR constructs its own harmonised EU labelling system and cross-refers to Directive (EU) 2024/825 for sustainability labels. In United States federal procurement, the Environmental Protection Agency's Recommendations of Specifications, Standards, and Ecolabels — the operative list, incorporated by reference through Federal Acquisition Regulation clause 52.223-23 — does not reference ISO 14024 or the Type vocabulary, framing its criteria functionally in terms of multi-attribute life-cycle-based standards and competent third-party certification (US EPA, n.d.). In construction, EN 15804:2012+A2:2019 is titled Sustainability of construction works — Environmental product declarations — Core rules for the product category of construction products: the sector's governing standard already names the instrument rather than its type number.

Directive (EU) 2024/825 is the exception. Alongside recital 10, which refers to "officially recognised EN ISO 14024 ecolabelling schemes in the Member States", the Directive inserts into Directive 2005/29/EC an operative definition of "recognised excellent environmental performance" as "environmental performance compliant with Regulation (EC) No 66/2010 … or with national or regional EN ISO 14024 type I ecolabelling schemes officially recognised in the Member States, or top environmental performance in accordance with other applicable Union law" (Directive (EU) 2024/825, Art. 1(1)). The deprecated designation therefore appears not in a recital but in a binding legal definition — one that determines when a trader may lawfully make a generic environmental claim.

The result is a textual discontinuity between the two instruments. The reference carries no edition year, so it rolls forward automatically to ISO 14024:2026, an edition in which the words "type I" do not appear, including in its title. EU law therefore defines a legal threshold by reference to a category designation that the referenced standard no longer contains. The immediate practical consequence is limited: the schemes the definition intends remain identifiable from the remainder of its wording, which specifies national or regional schemes officially recognised in the Member States, and no operator's status under the definition is altered. The discontinuity is nonetheless of the kind that can generate interpretive dispute at a later stage, and it arose in the instrument drafted most recently and with the most direct attention to environmental labelling.

Continued use of the terminology after deprecation

A final matter concerns the practical currency of the terminology, as distinct from its formal status in the standards.

The Global Ecolabelling Network — the peak international body for precisely the schemes ISO 14024 governs — continues to state that its member programmes "have attained the status of Type 1 according to ISO 14024:2018", and makes no reference to the 2026 edition (Global Ecolabelling Network, n.d.). ISO/TC 207's own subcommittee pages still describe the family using the Type vocabulary. A certification body announcing the publication of ISO 14024:2026 in May 2026 nonetheless explained it using the deprecated terms throughout, contrasting Type I ecolabels with Type II self-declarations and Type III EPDs (CSQA, 2026). Operative EU law, as set out in the preceding section, also uses the term.

The accurate description of the present state is therefore neither "Type I/II/III has been retired" nor "the terminology is current". It is that the vocabulary has been formally deprecated in the standards and removed from their titles, while remaining in active use by the institutions those standards govern and in at least one binding legal instrument. The terminology consequently continues to appear in current material in the field, including in documents published after its deprecation and by the peak association of the very programmes ISO 14024 governs.

The formulation supported by the record set out above is therefore: ISO deprecated the Type I/II/III terminology in ISO 14020:2022, as part of a wider vocabulary revision, and removed it from the titles of the 2026 editions of ISO 14021, 14024 and 14025, without publishing a stated rationale; the underlying tripartite distinction between instruments is retained. The preferred terms are "self-declared environmental claim", "ecolabel" and "environmental product declaration". Where a Type term must be used because a source uses it, it should be flagged as deprecated rather than reproduced as current.

References

Bratt, C., Hallstedt, S., Robèrt, K.-H., Broman, G. and Oldmark, J. (2011) 'Assessment of eco-labelling criteria development from a strategic sustainability perspective', Journal of Cleaner Production, 19(14), pp. 1631–1638. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.05.012.

Bratt, C., Hallstedt, S., Robèrt, K.-H., Broman, G. and Oldmark, J. (2013) 'Assessment of criteria development for public procurement from a strategic sustainability perspective', Journal of Cleaner Production, 52, pp. 309–316. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.02.007.

Certifico (2026) ISO 14021:2026, 27 June. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

CEN (2019) EN 15804:2012+A2:2019 Sustainability of construction works — Environmental product declarations — Core rules for the product category of construction products. Brussels: European Committee for Standardization.

CSQA (2026) Ecoetichette: pubblicata la ISO 14024:2026. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Directive (EU) 2024/825 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 February 2024 amending Directives 2005/29/EC and 2011/83/EU as regards empowering consumers for the green transition, OJ L, 2024/825, 6.3.2024. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

EPD International (2026) ISO 14025:2026 is published, 30 June. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Global Ecolabelling Network (n.d.) What is ecolabelling? Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Horne, R.E. (2009) 'Limits to labels: the role of eco-labels in the assessment of product sustainability and routes to sustainable consumption', International Journal of Consumer Studies, 33(2), pp. 175–182. doi:10.1111/j.1470-6431.2009.00752.x.

International Organization for Standardization (2006) ISO 14025:2006 Environmental labels and declarations — Type III environmental declarations — Principles and procedures. Geneva: ISO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

International Organization for Standardization (2018a) ISO 14024:2018 Environmental labels and declarations — Type I environmental labelling — Principles and procedures. 2nd edn. Geneva: ISO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

International Organization for Standardization (2018b) New version of ISO 14024 on ecolabelling just published [news item, ref. 2273], 9 March. Geneva: ISO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

International Organization for Standardization (2022) ISO 14020:2022 Environmental statements and programmes for products — Principles and general requirements. 3rd edn. Geneva: ISO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

International Organization for Standardization (2026a) ISO 14024:2026 Environmental statements and programmes for products — Ecolabels. 3rd edn. Geneva: ISO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

International Organization for Standardization (2026b) ISO 14025:2026 Environmental statements and programmes for products — Environmental product declarations (EPDs). 2nd edn. Geneva: ISO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

International Organization for Standardization (2026c) ISO 14021:2026 Environmental statements and programmes for products — Self-declared environmental claims. 3rd edn. Geneva: ISO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Iraldo, F., Griesshammer, R. and Kahlenborn, W. (2020) 'The future of ecolabels', The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 25(5), pp. 833–839. doi:10.1007/s11367-020-01741-9.

Minkov, N., Bach, V. and Finkbeiner, M. (2018) 'Characterization of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Products Program in the context of eco-labels and environmental declarations', Sustainability, 10(3), art. 738. doi:10.3390/su10030738.

Minkov, N., Lehmann, A., Winter, L. and Finkbeiner, M. (2020) 'Characterization of environmental labels beyond the criteria of ISO 14020 series', The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 25(5), pp. 840–855. doi:10.1007/s11367-019-01596-9.

Regulation (EU) 2025/40 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 December 2024 on packaging and packaging waste, amending Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 and Directive (EU) 2019/904, and repealing Directive 94/62/EC, OJ L, 2025/40, 22.1.2025. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

US Environmental Protection Agency (n.d.) Recommendations of Specifications, Standards, and Ecolabels for Federal Purchasing. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Note on sources and verification

The DEPRECATED: designations at ISO 14020:2022 clauses 3.2.1 and 3.2.6–3.2.8, on which the central argument rests, were retrieved from the publicly posted ISO sample preview of the standard and confirmed by independent retrievals returning consistent text. They have not been checked against a purchased copy of the full standard.

Publication dates, edition numbers, titles and withdrawal dates for every standard cited are taken from the ISO online catalogue and are of high confidence. The absence of Type terminology from the 2026 editions is verified for their titles and, for ISO 14024:2026, for the visible front matter of the ANSI preview. The body text of clause 3 in the 2026 editions was not retrievable, so whether those editions carry their own deprecation notices is unconfirmed.

The finding that ISO published no rationale is a negative, established by searching the ISO news archive, the ISO/TC 207/SC 3 committee pages and the standards' own front matter. Negatives of this kind cannot be proven conclusively.

The characterisation attributed to EPD International also appears verbatim on the site of EPD Australasia, a regional hub of the same programme. These are one source syndicated, not two independent confirmations, and the claim is cited once accordingly. It is a programme operator's characterisation of the change, not a statement by ISO.

The quotation of the "recognised excellent environmental performance" definition was confirmed against both the EUR-Lex HTML text and the Official Journal PDF of Directive (EU) 2024/825.

Last verified: 17 August 2026.