China's supermarket shelves are full of products claiming to be "friendly to the environment'' or "non-polluting''.

But these claims are expected to be banned late next year because they are considered vague and non-specific by the International Organization for Standardization. The ISO14021 standards were issued as part of the ISO14020 series on "green'' labelling in 1998 to ensure consistency in environmental claims for all products and services.

The ISO14020 standards require environmental labelling and statement to be exact and truthful. They must not mislead consumers or be used as technical trade barriers.

According to Xia Qing, head of the national ISO14020 standards research team, a scheme for implementing the standards will be completed next year.Xia said the current market for environmental labelling in China is poor because there is no uniformity in the claims made.

Many companies promote their products by calling them "green'' or "environmentally friendly.''

But consumers usually do not have a clear idea of how the products are "green'' because there is no consistency in terms of definitions. They could be cheated by companies, Xia said.

Xia's team, funded under a 3 million yuan (US$362,000) grant from the Chinese Government, started work in 2001 and aims to work out a national scheme for implementing the standards, regulations on its management and supervision and key technical standards.

The team is not only planning to regulate the "green market'' in China but break down international trade barriers based on environmental criteria.

In future, the "green market'' will be composed of various environmental labels and statements that abide by the ISO14020 standards, said Fu Xuzhe, vice-chairman and secretary-general of the China Society of Commodity Science.

The society issues environmental labels to companies and is now adopting the ISO14020 standards.

According to Xia, currently there are 10 to 20 certification institutions in China issuing dozens of environmental labels.

Such institutions will face great challenge after November 2005 when foreign certification bodies are permitted to enter the Chinese market and do business.

At present, foreign institutions are only allowed to do business through joint ventures, Xia said.

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