Sustainability is a term we hear about frequently: politicians are championing sustainability causes in communities, businesses are launching campaigns purporting themselves as sustainability champions, and products are marketed as better and more sustainable than their competitors. Often, the word “sustainable” can be a synonym for the word “good” in product marketing. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ⁷ sustainability is based on the principle that everything that we need for our survival depends on our natural environment, and that to pursue sustainability is to create and maintain conditions that balance human impacts on nature to coexist in harmony.


Engineers have an important job of solving many of the problems associated with supply chains — supply chains traditionally are very linear, characterizing a “take-make-dispose” pathway, which is proving to be unsustainable in the long term. The ongoing consumption of raw resources coupled with the resulting vast amount of waste has placed a significant strain on the environment. For example, the International Resource Panel ³ suggests that resource extraction and processing is the cause of more than 90% of biodiversity loss. As more organizations seek to promote sustainable practices as a core component of their business model, sustainability, as a term, runs the risk of becoming seen as a marketing claim more than anything else. Many companies are eager to display their eco-credibility. This often takes the form of programs around recyclability or carbon offsets, engineering efficiencies into their supply chains to reduce raw material consumption, or modifying repair and reuse policies. The reality is that greenwashing — when companies advertise incorrect or generic environmental claims about a product or service — has happened and can continue to occur. How can we as professionals, engineers, and sustainably minded consumers recognize and evaluate consumer-environmental claims?

Greenwashing can take many forms. Organizations may use generic statements like “green” or “eco-friendly” to help advertise and market their products, but more nuanced forms of greenwashing can be more difficult to detect. These greenwashing practices not only hurt the consumer and planet by not valuing sustainable practices, but the reputation of the organization and subsequent environmental efforts by eroding trust. In 2015, to provide clear guidelines and combat greenwashing, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.⁶ Research by Ortiz-de-Montellano et al. ⁴ suggests circular economy principles can be adopted in all 17 SDGs and all 169 targets.

Learn more about how UL Standards & Engagement is contributing to the advancement of these critical goals 

Consumers are demanding transparency from companies regarding their environmental impact and want to know the whole story behind the products they purchase, often from cradle to cradle (from raw material sourcing and creation to how the product is recycled).

Bonacorsi ¹ argues circular economies eliminate waste and pollution, keep products and materials moving in a circular supply chain, and will regenerate natural resources. Accurately measuring circularity has long been a goal in ensuring efforts are being made toward increasing sustainability. But how can organizations accurately measure, report out, and increase their efforts toward circularity? To help alleviate these concerns about a lack of transparency, UL Standards & Engagement published UL 3600, the Standard for Measuring and Reporting Circular Economy Aspects of Products, Sites and Organizations, to provide a comprehensive set of metrics and criteria for evaluating and reporting on how companies are contributing to sustainable practices. By using the metrics set in UL 3600, companies can demonstrate their commitment to sustainability in a transparent, quantifiable, and trustworthy way. 

On a societal level, greenwashing by companies can lead to disengagement and cynicism. How do future problem-solvers contribute to a more honest and sustainable economic model? There is a lack of a unified framework for measuring circularity, which is a significant roadblock to progress. Without a clear understanding of how to quantify circularity, organizations struggle to set meaningful targets or report their value in sustainability efforts. This lack of standardization also impacts engineers working in many fields, as it becomes more difficult to design products and processes with circularity as a guiding principle. Performance in sustainability is tricky to track without standardized reporting metrics, and communication with consumers is impacted through this ambiguity. Additionally, as an organization seeking to differentiate themselves in a complex market, comparison between similar organizations toward goals around sustainability is difficult to measure.


To address a lack of organizational measurements and to increase transparency in circularity efforts, UL Standards & Engagement convened a technical committee (TC) of experts in 2019 to create a standardized method of measuring sustainability at the site, product, and company level. The TC includes individuals in a wide variety of industries (including sustainability, chemical supply, forestry, waste management, and more), members of academia, as well as regulatory and international agencies. In developing the standard, the committee discussed many aspects of how to translate organizational circularity into quantifiable measurements related to material flows.

UL 3600 establishes a framework for reporting on sustainability efforts, not only making it easier for companies to communicate their progress toward more sustainable products and services, but it also provides a benchmark for assessing their progress toward these goals. Eliminating waste, reusing materials, and regenerating natural resources were priority material flows emphasized by the TC. For products, the committee members created measurements for estimating recycled content, reuse of products and components, refurbished content, and how waste is reincorporated into products. The measurements also include biobased circularity, considering materials and processes that favor compostability and biobased recycling. For example, they defined a compost content measurement by dividing the mass of the biobased compostable content at the product’s end of life by the mass of the product — thereby providing an overall measurement of compostability at the product’s end of life.  


For consumers, UL 3600 allows for transparent communication about the relevant metrics for real comparison regarding commitments to sustainability efforts. UL 3600 increases awareness of key metrics involved in real sustainability and circular efforts. For example, UL 3600 provides measurements for how much of a product is produced from recycled or refurbished materials and produces a simple calculation (in a percentage of the mass of the final product) in addition to many more measurements. Consumer demand for transparency in companies can lead to large-scale transformations of markets and encourages companies to adopt more sustainable practices that consumers desire.

UL 3600 directly addressed many issues raised throughout this case study:

• Combating greenwashing: UL 3600 includes quantifiable metrics for evaluating inflow and outflow, and provides tools to analyze these measurements to create clear communication about real sustainability and circularity efforts. This transparency allows stakeholders and consumers to see through misleading claims and support organizations that have a real commitment to sustainability causes.
• Shifting mindsets: UL 3600 has accessible language and measurements that provide tools for discussing circularity, lowering the barrier for consumers to engage with sustainability-minded organizations. 
• Empowering engineers and stakeholders: UL 3600 equips those involved in organizations with hands-on tools and knowledge to consider circularity from the onset in designing products or organizations. Utilizing these tools incorporates the standards metrics into all aspects of their work, creating clear contributions toward sustainable and regenerative futures.

As more organizations seek to certify to UL 3600, they can benefit by empowering customers to make informed choices to support sustainable organizations, drive innovation to meet increasingly more challenging sustainability challenges, and promote a circular economy. By evaluating initiatives using UL 3600, sustainability is no longer a buzzword, but a pathway for societal change toward a safe and secure future.