Standards are an important tool which, if well used, can contribute to a healthy and clean environment. ECOS works to raise awareness about the need for new or revised standards for crucial environmental sectors, policies or innovations, and pushing for robustness and environmental ambition in policies and laws that use standards for implementation. For over two decades, ECOS has been working to ensure an effective participation of environmental NGOs in standardisation, and a more inclusive standardisation system.

Our job is, however, still far from done: we strongly believe that the way standards are developed can be significantly improved. An area that requires particular attention is the degree to which standardisation organisations and their processes ensure effective and balanced participation of different types of stakeholders, including those representing the environmental voice. Environmental stakeholders can add significant value to the process and the quality of standards by providing environmental and scientific perspectives, as well as technical expertise which may otherwise not be available to standards makers. Our participation ensures that the standards developed can better contribute to a broad range of environmental challenges. For the green transition to become a reality, standards need to be developed with a closer involvement by governments and societal stakeholders and should not solely be at the discretion of market players.