In September, a peer-reviewed paper was published in the Journal of Agricultural Economics demonstrating, very broadly, that ecolabeling works. Ecolabelling—the practice of placing a label on a retail product to indicate the product is both “ecofriendly” and sustainably brought to market—has, over the past few years, gained widespread acceptance in products such as seafood, coffee, sugar, oil, and wine. In each of these industries, historic concerns about over-exploiting resources and abusing people involved in the harvest or processing of the product produced a desire in some consumers to know more about a product’s origins and the wider-reaching socio-economic impacts of bringing that product to market. When it comes to the success or failure of ecolabelling, the essential question is whether or not the aforementioned consumer desire is sufficient to cause enough market share to seek out and, in many cases, spend more on a product bearing an ecolabel. The study reported in Journal of Agricultural Economics answers that question in the affirmative when it comes to select ecolabelled seafood, and some believe ecolabelling can be equally successful in the marine aquarium trade. Ecolabels are not… More: