The Free EU Database That Tells You If an Appliance Is Actually Green

When a washing machine or television breaks, you end up in a showroom or flicking through a dozen browser tabs, trying to choose between replacements described as "eco-friendly" or "green." They look the same and cost the same, and there is generally no way to tell which claim, if any, is true.

The European Commission has found that more than half of green claims are vague, misleading or unfounded, and that four in ten come with no supporting evidence at all. With more than 230 sustainability labels and 100 green energy labels competing for attention across the EU, the rational consumer response has been to trust none of them.

What already exists

The European Product Registry for Energy Labelling, known as EPREL, is a public database that provides the evidence needed to cut through this.

Since 2019, any appliance requiring an EU energy label — washing machines, fridges, dishwashers, even tyres — must have its performance data logged in the register before it can be sold. More than two million products are now listed.

Nine in ten EU shoppers research products online, but more than half have never noticed the QR code on an energy label. Photograph: BearFotos/Shutterstock

How to use it

Scan the QR code on the energy label, or search for the model on the EPREL website. In Great Britain, post-Brexit labels carry their own QR code with a UK flag, but most models appear in EPREL too.

What you find goes well beyond the letter grade: electricity use per 100 wash cycles, water consumption, spin performance, noise, wet grip for tyres, the hidden energy cost of high-contrast television settings. These are the numbers that determine your bills, rather than the adjectives on the box.

You can sort by up to three criteria at once — energy first, water second, noise third — and compare side by side. "Eco-friendly" either shows up in the data or it does not.

One feature is especially useful and almost unknown: you can check how many competing products share a rating. If half the market is A-rated, the boast means very little. And if the label in the shop does not match the register, a single anonymous tap reports it to the manufacturer and the regulators.

Why nobody knows

This raises the obvious question of why a free, mandatory, comprehensive database is invisible.

An EU-funded survey of more than 2,500 shoppers found that while nine out of ten research products online, more than half have never noticed the QR code on an energy label, and barely one in 16 has ever scanned it.

The irony is sharp. Shoppers say they want exactly what EPREL already provides — complete data, filters, side-by-side comparison — and simply do not know it is there.

A tool built for the wrong user

The explanation is in the origin. EPREL was built for regulatory compliance and only opened to the public in 2022. It was designed so that manufacturers could file data and regulators could check it, not so that a shopper standing in a showroom could make a decision in ninety seconds.

That distinction shows up everywhere in consumer policy. A disclosure regime that technically publishes the information has satisfied its legal obligation while leaving the actual information asymmetry intact, because publication and communication are not the same act.

The fix here is not more regulation. The data exists, it is mandatory, it is verified and it is free. What is missing is any reason for a shopper to look at it — which, for once, makes this a problem that a well-placed QR code and a decent search interface could genuinely solve.