The Smokescreen of a Daisy: Critical Notes on the EU Ecolabel scheme
The Smokescreen of a Daisy: Critical Notes on the EU Ecolabel scheme

Summary/Abstract: From its inception, Brundtland’s amnesic sustainable development umbrella covering inclusively the ecolabel schemes has been mimicking the historical dynamic of capitalism by simultaneously generating the “same” and the “new”. In such a context, the aim of the present paper is to cast light on the dialectical dynamic which makes the EU Ecolabel scheme unfit for purpose and inadequate for the de-fetishisation of green commodities. Employing the tools of Marxian economics and that of critical legal studies, the study argues that as long as the deeper causes of ecological crises are sought at “unsustainable” production and consumption patterns, and not at systemic factors and tendencies, the perverse effects of the “environmental daisy” will endure. To this end, in the first two chapters I drafted a reader’s guide, and presented the international and European sources of law relevant to sustainable consumption and production, and ecolabel, respectively. The second part depicts the unique dynamic of the “treadmill of accumulation”, a motion which prevents the formation of a truly sustainable mode of production, and through the ecolabel proliferates new ways of fetishisation and political numbness. Moreover, my critical assessments describe how the EU Ecolabel Regulation should be amended in order to address the problem of green overproduction and overconsumption, while also recognise the obstacles to the proposed changes. The treadmill can be demolished, but only with critical thought and radical political action. Those in favour of ecological modernisation would argue that the EU ecolabel scheme is still new, we should wait, but unfortunately time has this bad habit not to.

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