The Australian "Good Environmental Choice"  program launched in November 2001 provides to the community an environmental mark of recognition for a wide range of products and services.  The benefits of an independent environmental label is that all Australians can easily recognise products which are sensitive to environmental pressures. The Australian Ecolabel Program has been developed for general compliance to ISO 14 024 and is managed by a not-for-profit organisation utilising a national network of registered assessors. The  program awards a mark of recognition for products and services that meet standards of environmental, quality and social performance.

The voluntary Australian Environmental Labelling Standards developed by Good Environmental Choice Australia Ltd (GECA) are designed to give manufacturers, distributors, and marketers the financial benefits of dealing in and  producing environmentally preferable products. The association develops scientifically recognised benchmarks for the environmental performance of products and services throughout the market. A product's or service's performance against these benchmarks  will determine whether it is awarded the Australian "Good Environmental Choice" ecolabel.

At this important time in the Australian market and societal development, we believe we provide a very valuable service to the community and environmentally responsible manufacturers. Our focus is to extract as much benefit for these producers as possible and to have their product used in the market ahead of the competition which show a lack of environmental responsibility. The GECA certification scheme is built on a recognised international standard detailing how independent ecolabelling schemes should be administered:  ISO 14 021.  

If you are already in business and have been exposed to the environmental challenges in the market you will be surprised as to how easily our ecolabel allows for environmental benefits to create financial prosperity. If you are new to this area you will find out how showing environmental performance has some of the strongest rewards available for any business.

Australia has only a very restricted set of environmental labels including  energy efficiency labelling for a select set of appliances, an organic produce label, and a small number of competing forest products labels. Only a few other industries have set up what can be properly called an independent environmental certification scheme. Of these, only the energy star label has had any real recognition in Australia. It is the intention of GECA  that our service becomes the leading ecolabel in Australia recognized throughout the market. Environmental labelling schemes are in existence in Austria, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, China, Korea, Denmark, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the USA. We think that it is certainly time that Australia has an independent environmental labelling scheme that is non-government or industry affiliated and meets the needs of small producers as well as large. 

Australia spends more than $10.1 billion per annum  in increasing the environmental performance of the market. Commonwealth and State Governments have over the past 10 years enacted more than 100 pieces of legislation relevant to the environmental performance of industry and our community. The Environmental Protection Agencies are often on the ground giving clear directions to businesses and companies that they can't do what they have been doing for so long. Many companies have now initiated environmental policies in their operations and have given considerable time and money to ensuring their environmental performance is acceptable, not least from the threat to their directors which are liable for the environmental damages that their operations may cause. In carefully assessing all of these growing trends, GECA  has developed a range of services to help get business in line with the environmental expectations of the 21st Century.