Environmental information is becoming part of everyday product decisions. Procurement teams compare environmental performance. Customers encounter environmental claims on packaging and digital platforms. Companies need sustainability information from suppliers. Regulators and investors increasingly expect environmental statements to be supported by credible evidence.
The challenge is no longer simply providing more environmental information. It is making clear what that information means, how it was developed, and what evidence stands behind it.
Two important ISO standards published on 24 June 2026 address different parts of this challenge: ISO 14021:2026 – Environmental statements and programmes for products — Self-declared environmental claims and ISO 14025:2026 – Environmental statements and programmes for products — Environmental product declarations (EPDs). Both were developed by ISO/TC 207/SC 3 on environmental labelling and form part of the wider ISO 14020 family for environmental product communication.
But they address very different forms of communication.
ISO 14021 governs environmental claims organizations make themselves. ISO 14025 provides the framework for structured Environmental Product Declarations based on life cycle assessment.
Understanding that distinction is increasingly important as organizations build more sophisticated environmental information around their products.
Why environmental product information is becoming a leadership issue
Environmental claims were once primarily a marketing concern. Environmental Product Declarations were often handled by sustainability specialists, technical experts or specific sectors such as construction.
That is changing.
Environmental product information increasingly influences procurement, product development, supplier management, sustainability reporting and strategic decisions. It can also affect how organizations position products and communicate environmental performance throughout their value chains.
For senior leaders, the question is therefore broader than “What environmental claims can we make?”
The more important questions are:
- What information do customers and buyers actually need?
- What evidence supports our environmental statements?
- Which environmental information should be quantified?
- How consistently is environmental data managed across products?
- Can suppliers provide the information we need?
- Do users understand the difference between a claim, an ecolabel and an EPD?
- Can environmental information remain trustworthy as it moves through digital systems and value chains?
ISO 14021 and ISO 14025 provide two different but complementary mechanisms for addressing these questions.
ISO 14021: A stronger framework for claims made by organizations themselves
ISO 14021:2026 is the third edition of the standard and replaces ISO 14021:2016 and its 2021 amendment. It establishes principles, requirements and guidance for self-declared environmental claims about products and their environmental statement programmes.
These are claims made without relying on an ecolabelling programme to award the claim.
They can appear as words, symbols or graphics on products or packaging, but ISO 14021 explicitly recognizes that they can also appear in product literature, technical information, advertising, publicity and digital platforms.
That makes the standard increasingly relevant in a digital product-information environment.
An environmental claim might appear on physical packaging, an e-commerce page, a product database, a digital catalogue or another digital interface. Regardless of the channel, organizations need appropriate documentation and methodologies to assess the claims they make. ISO 14021 defines selected commonly used environmental terms and provides qualifications for their use.
For leadership, the important principle is straightforward:
A self-declared claim is still an evidence-based claim.
Organizations cannot assume that because they make the claim themselves, governance around the claim is less important.
The stronger environmental claims become as commercial differentiators, the more important it becomes to establish internal processes for determining who approves claims, what evidence is required, which data is used and how claims remain valid when products or underlying information change.
ISO 14025: Turning lifecycle information into structured product declarations
ISO 14025:2026 addresses a different type of environmental communication.
The second edition replaces ISO 14025:2006 and establishes principles and requirements, together with guidance, for Environmental Product Declaration programmes and their associated EPDs.
Central to ISO 14025 is the connection with life cycle assessment.
The standard specifies the use of ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 on life cycle assessment in developing EPDs. The resulting declarations are intended to communicate potential environmental impacts and environmental aspects of products to their intended audiences.
This creates a much more structured form of environmental communication.
Rather than communicating a single environmental characteristic or marketing statement, an EPD can provide quantified environmental information based on an established methodological framework.
For organizations, this makes EPDs particularly relevant where environmental information needs to support:
- procurement decisions,
- comparisons within appropriately defined frameworks,
- product and portfolio management,
- environmental performance discussions with customers,
- supply-chain information exchange,
- lifecycle-oriented decisions,
- and increasingly data-driven sustainability processes.
ISO 14025 also recognizes that EPDs primarily address potential environmental impacts and environmental aspects, while related social and economic information can be included as additional sustainability-related information where relevant and available. The standard itself does not establish social or economic LCA indicators.
Claims, ecolabels and EPDs are not the same thing
One of the most important management implications of the 2026 revisions is the need to understand the wider ISO 14020 family as an architecture for different forms of environmental product communication.
ISO 14020:2022 provides the general principles and requirements for environmental statements and programmes for products. Within that wider framework, ISO 14021, ISO 14024 and ISO 14025 provide different mechanisms.
ISO 14021:2026 — Self-declared environmental claims: The organization makes an environmental claim and needs appropriate evidence and methodologies to support it. Claims may appear through text, symbols or graphics across physical and digital communication channels.
ISO 14024:2026 — Ecolabels: An ecolabelling programme establishes product categories, environmental and product-function criteria, and a process for assessing and certifying products permitted to use the ecolabel. ISO 14024 also addresses how conforming ecolabels can be distinguished from other environmental statements and labels in the market.
ISO 14025:2026 — Environmental Product Declarations: EPD programmes provide structured declarations of environmental information based on lifecycle assessment according to ISO 14040 and ISO 14044.
These approaches should therefore not be treated as interchangeable.
A self-declared claim communicates something different from an ecolabel, and an ecolabel performs a different role from an EPD.
For organizations, this creates an important communication responsibility: the recipient should be able to understand what kind of environmental statement they are looking at and what level of evidence and process supports it.
From individual claims to environmental information architecture
The leadership opportunity is to look beyond individual labels and declarations and start thinking about environmental product information as an organizational architecture.
Many organizations currently manage environmental information in fragments.
Marketing may manage claims. Sustainability functions may manage lifecycle assessments. Product teams maintain technical specifications. Procurement collects information from suppliers. Regulatory teams maintain compliance information. EPDs may be produced through separate programmes or external specialists.
The underlying environmental information, however, often relates to the same products.
As demand for environmental data increases, these separate processes need to become more connected.
Organizations increasingly need to determine:
- What environmental information do we maintain about each product?
- Which statements are derived from that information?
- Which claims are self-declared?
- Which information has been assessed through an ecolabelling programme?
- Which information comes from lifecycle assessment and an EPD?
- What evidence supports each statement?
- Who is responsible for keeping it accurate over time?
This is where ISO 14021 and ISO 14025 become strategically interesting beyond their immediate purposes. Together with ISO 14020 and ISO 14024, they can help organizations establish a clearer governance model for environmental product communication.
Digitalization raises the stakes
The shift toward digital product information makes this even more important.
ISO 14021 explicitly recognizes that self-declared environmental claims may appear on digital platforms. At the same time, structured environmental information such as EPD data is increasingly relevant to digital procurement, product databases and value-chain information exchange.
This creates opportunities, but also new governance questions.
When environmental information becomes digital, it can be copied, distributed and reused at much greater scale. A product claim originally created for one purpose may appear across retailer websites, supplier portals, procurement systems and customer applications.
The information therefore needs to remain connected to the correct product, the correct version of the underlying data and the appropriate supporting evidence.
This suggests an important future direction: environmental product communication will increasingly depend not only on what information is communicated, but also on how that information is identified, structured, maintained and exchanged.
What organizations should do now
The simultaneous publication of ISO 14021:2026 and ISO 14025:2026 provides a good opportunity to review environmental product communication as a whole rather than updating the standards separately.
- Map your environmental statements and identify where self-declared claims, ecolabels, EPDs and other environmental information are currently used.
- Classify each type of communication so that the organization understands which ISO framework is relevant.
- Review the evidence behind self-declared claims and ensure documentation, methodologies and responsibilities are clearly established.
- Review your use of EPDs and determine where lifecycle-based information creates value for customers, procurement, product development or sustainability management.
- Connect environmental information with product governance so that claims and declarations remain associated with the correct products and underlying data.
- Clarify ownership for environmental product information across sustainability, marketing, procurement, product management and compliance functions.
- Consider digital distribution and identify where environmental statements are being reused outside the system or channel where they were originally created.
- Review ISO 14020, ISO 14021, ISO 14024 and ISO 14025 together rather than treating each standard as an isolated environmental communication tool.
The objective should not simply be to produce more environmental information. It should be to establish a system in which different environmental statements serve clear purposes and are supported by appropriate evidence.
What organizations should do now
The simultaneous publication of ISO 14021:2026 and ISO 14025:2026 provides a good opportunity to review environmental product communication as a whole rather than updating the standards separately.
- Map your environmental statements and identify where self-declared claims, ecolabels, EPDs and other environmental information are currently used.
- Classify each type of communication so that the organization understands which ISO framework is relevant.
- Review the evidence behind self-declared claims and ensure documentation, methodologies and responsibilities are clearly established.
- Review your use of EPDs and determine where lifecycle-based information creates value for customers, procurement, product development or sustainability management.
- Connect environmental information with product governance so that claims and declarations remain associated with the correct products and underlying data.
- Clarify ownership for environmental product information across sustainability, marketing, procurement, product management and compliance functions.
- Consider digital distribution and identify where environmental statements are being reused outside the system or channel where they were originally created.
- Review ISO 14020, ISO 14021, ISO 14024 and ISO 14025 together rather than treating each standard as an isolated environmental communication tool.
The objective should not simply be to produce more environmental information. It should be to establish a system in which different environmental statements serve clear purposes and are supported by appropriate evidence.
The leadership opportunity
Environmental information is becoming part of the infrastructure through which organizations demonstrate sustainability performance.
ISO 14021 allows organizations to communicate environmental characteristics directly, but requires structured approaches to the claims and their supporting documentation. ISO 14024 provides a framework for ecolabel programmes and certification. ISO 14025 provides the architecture for lifecycle-based Environmental Product Declarations.
Together, these standards allow leaders to move from fragmented environmental messaging toward a more systematic approach to environmental product information governance.
That means deciding what information matters, how it should be communicated, what evidence is required, who is accountable, and how information remains reliable as products and data change.
For organizations operating across complex value chains, this can also strengthen supplier dialogue and procurement. Better environmental information downstream ultimately depends on better environmental information upstream.
The leadership opportunity
Environmental information is becoming part of the infrastructure through which organizations demonstrate sustainability performance.
ISO 14021 allows organizations to communicate environmental characteristics directly, but requires structured approaches to the claims and their supporting documentation. ISO 14024 provides a framework for ecolabel programmes and certification. ISO 14025 provides the architecture for lifecycle-based Environmental Product Declarations.
Together, these standards allow leaders to move from fragmented environmental messaging toward a more systematic approach to environmental product information governance.
That means deciding what information matters, how it should be communicated, what evidence is required, who is accountable, and how information remains reliable as products and data change.
For organizations operating across complex value chains, this can also strengthen supplier dialogue and procurement. Better environmental information downstream ultimately depends on better environmental information upstream.
Final thought
The publication of ISO 14021:2026 and ISO 14025:2026 represents more than the revision of two established environmental standards. Both standards were published on 24 June 2026, while ISO 14024:2026 had been published the previous month, giving organizations an updated set of core standards covering self-declared environmental claims, ecolabels and EPDs.
The timing is significant.
Environmental product communication is moving from isolated labels and sustainability statements toward increasingly structured, evidence-based and digital information.
For leadership, the challenge is therefore no longer simply deciding what environmental message should appear on a product.
It is building the governance behind that information: what it means, where it comes from, how it is substantiated, how it relates to the product and how others can trust it.
ISO 14021 and ISO 14025:2026 strengthen two critical parts of that architecture — helping organizations move from environmental messaging toward credible, structured and evidence-based environmental product information.