Research for the Office of Fair Trading has highlighted competition concerns associated with environmental product standards. The report has ramifications for how voluntary agreements are designed. Badly designed environmental product standards can end up delivering a poor deal to consumers and may fail to achieve green objectives, a report for the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) finds.1 The research, by economics consultancy Frontier Economics, was commissioned in response to the proliferation of environmental standards and labels. The OFT wanted to know what these standards might mean for competition between product manufacturers and suppliers, and what action could be taken to reduce any loss of competition. While the report will not be used to update guidance, the OFT's director of economics, Tony Donaldson, said it contributed to the debate about how to design product standards. There was a need to ensure "environmental standards work with, rather than against, market forces", he added.
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