How green was my (shopping) buggy

Trying to go green might make you go nuts. There are so many ecolabels and green/ecologically sound/otherwise environmentally terrific certifications that it's easy to get confused and stay uninformed. A new Web site has been developed to help explain some of those labels, and though it's a little light on information it's a good start on learning about ecocertification.

The new database is called Ecolabelling.org, and as you might imagine it's at http://ecolabelling.org/. You can search through 285 ecolabels for everything from food to wood products. You can browse through all of them or you can do a keyword search.

Since we're in a drought I did a search for "water" and got 33 results. The labels included the Waterwise Marque, WaterSense, and the China Water Conservation Certification. You get more information about the labels, including details on what they mean, who administers them, contact information, and often a link to a Web page with more information. What you DON'T get is a list of products which meet that certification. However, I did find that if you do a regular search engine query for the ecolabel name plus the product you're interested in, you will get some pretty good results. <i>"Waterwise Marque" dishwasher</i> did point me to a lot of certified appliances. Try <i>EnergyStar dishwasher</i> for a US example.