Qualidade Ambiental: Brazil’s ecologically watchful hummingbird

The Brazilian environmental quality certification scheme, Certificado do Rótulo Ecológico ABNT – Qualidade Ambiental, took wing in 1993 as a joint programme by the Brazilian Association for Technical Standards (Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas – ABNT) and the Brazilian Government. This scheme uses a life-cycle analysis.

So far, this hummingbird is the prettiest official eco-symbol I’ve seen.

But just as the hummingbird is little, so is the information about it. I’d like to know how they came up with such a, dare I say it, “organic” logo, rather than something functional but rather geometric.

The ABNT is a private, independent, non-commercial body, founded in 1940. It is one of the founders of and the only Brazilian representative to the ISO (International Organization for Standardization).

Elsewhere, there’s more technical info at, for example, www.eps.ufsc.br/disserta97/duarte/cap5.htm#5.4 (Portuguese).

Update – 2008/02/25: hummingbird in Portuguese is beija-flor (“flower kisser”), in German it’s Kolibri, originating from a now extinct language in the French Caribbean, although colibri also seems to appear in Brazilian Portuguese.

This entry is part of the Infomancy Eco-Symbols Series.