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Letter to OIRA: Coordinate on Green Labels

Several federal agencies are in the process of issuing or updating a spate of environmental labels for consumer products: cars, tires, appliances, and now, recent Federal Trade Commission proposals will affect the labeling on lots of other everyday items.

Communicating environmental information to the public is smart policy and good behavioral economics—one of OIRA director, Cass Sunstein’s areas of expertise.

Today, we sent Sunstein a letter suggesting an inter-agency working group to avoid the risk of wheel-recreation and inconsistency on the labels. Coordinated guidelines for these labels would save money and time on duplicative consumer behavior research, decrease public confusion since there would be one set of labels instead of many, and that one set of labels would theoretically be the most effective having been rigorously designed.

As a bonus, a single set of stickers makes compliance cheaper for regulated entities.