From the production and use phase until disposal, products and product systems have manifold environmental impacts. In this area, the past decades have brought numerous measures in environmental policy as well as corporate approaches that aim at the reduction of adverse environmental impacts. Ökopol can draw upon solid experience of market research, expert advice and background studies in the field of Integrated Product Policy and the respective policy instruments. The institute enjoys confidence from all stakeholder groups in the role of promoting and facilitating the stakeholder dialogue in this field.

Since the early nineties Ökopol has been performing Ecolabel related studies and facilitated workshops on overarching aspects like interlinkage of ecolabels with other political instruments. On the other hand, Ökopol has for many years been giving technical input to or leading the development of product group specific criteria. The focus lies on the European Ecolabel and the German Blue Angel but respective work for corporate labelling activities is also included.

Ökopol is also deeply involved in the processes of implementation of the Ecodesign Directive (2009/125/EC) and the Energy Labelling Directive (2010/30/EU) on energy-related products (ErP) within various projects and for several stakeholder groups and authorities including the European Commission (DG Environment), the German Federal Environment Agency and ministries. Both technical and political issues are in the focus of the reflections. Ökopol provides a publicly accessible website providing information on the implementation of the Ecodesign and Energy labelling Directives in English (www.eup-network.de) and German language(www.eup-network.de/de/aktuell/).

The field of Green Procurement is dealt with not only in the above mentioned stakeholder dialogues but also in specific projects for different stakeholders from industry and public authorities (e.g. developing respective guidance for German ministries).

The activities are conducted by the interdisciplinary team of Ökopol experts and are supported by well established contacts to different stakeholder groups (National governments, public authorities, industry associations, companies and NGOs).