Sustainable products are products either sustainably sourced, manufactured or processed and provide environmental, social, and economic benefits while protecting public health and the environment throughout their whole life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to the final disposal.

According to Belz, Frank-Martin, the definition of sustainable product has six characteristics:

Michael Braungart and William McDonough's book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things expands on the life-cycle part of this definition. They suggest that every material and product should be made in a manner that when its useful life is over, all the materials of which it is made can be returned to the Earth after composting, or endlessly recycled as raw materials.

Product information can enable, facilitate, require or support consumers or other buyers and importers to identify sustainable products or sustainability of products. Sustainability standards and certifications are used for this purpose:

Sustainability standards, also known as Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS), are private standards that require products to meet specific economic, social, or environmental sustainability metrics. The requirements include product quality or attributes, production and processing methods, and transportation. VSS are mostly designed and marketed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or private firms, and they are adopted by actors up and down the value chain, from farmers to retailers. Certifications and labels signal the successful implementation of a VSS. Over the last decades, these standards have emerged as new tools to address key sustainability challenges such as biodiversity, climate change, and human rights. The standards cover a wide range of sectors, such as agriculture, fishery, forestry, energy, textile, and others. According to the ITC standards map, agricultural products are the most commonly covered products, followed by consumer products.

The Nordic Swan Ecolabel standard, which is distributed in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland, mainly refers to distinguished products that have a positive effect on the environment. It likely has climate requirements that limit the amount of CO₂ emissions where it is most relevant. More than 3,000 products, predominantly household chemicals, paper products, office machinery, and building materials, have been issued with this label. The criteria account for environmental factors through the product's life cycle (raw material extraction, production and distribution, use and refuse). Thus the most important parameters are consumption of natural resources and energy, emissions into air, water and soil, generation of waste and noise.

GRI frames and disseminates global sustainability reporting guidelines for ‘voluntary use by organizations reporting on the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of their activities, products, and services.’ According to GRI Guidelines, reporting bodies should consider stakeholders’ interests and use social indicators and others that more accurately depict the organization's social and ecological performance.

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates and discloses the environmental benefits of products over their complete life cycle, from raw materials extraction to final disposition. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has standardized the process of conducting LCA studies since 1997.