With the side-by-side rise in consumer demand for green products and companies seeking ways to reduce the impacts of their products and services has come a flood of eco-labels: According to a recent article in the Washington Post, there are more than 600 such labels worldwide, and 80 in the United States alone.

Many of these labels are vastly different; comparing an Energy Star product to a Fair Trade product is quite a bit more complicated than apples to oranges (both of which, of course, could earn the USDA's Organic label as well as the Fair Trade label). And other labels cover much the same turf, but with fine distinctions that can drive shoppers to distraction -- take as an example the FSC vs. SFI dustup currently underway in the world of green buildings.

Earlier this month, the environmental group Rainforest Alliance held a daylong event highlighting the voluntary green economy, made up of sustainability certifications as well as corporate and individual environmental practices. As part of the event, RA handed out awards to companies that it calls "leaders in sustainability" for their work with Rainforest Alliance.

Rainforest Alliance offers one of the aformentioned 600 green labels -- Rainforest Alliance Certified. And in the course of creating its daylong event in New York, the group brought together not just its award winners, but also representatives from a number of world-leading companies to share their success stories and help other firms benefit from the growth of the green economy.

The GreenBiz.com editorial staff talked with some of these leaders to find out how businesses large and small address the glut of eco-labels. Below are excerpts of interviews conducted by Jonathan Bardelline, Leslie Guevarra, Tilde Herrera and me.

Green from the Ground Up

One of the winners of Rainforest Alliance's Sustainable Standard-Setters awards for 2010 is Willamette Valley Vineyards, which was honored as the first winery to use only FSC-certified cork for its bottling.

While the FSC certification for its corks is far from the only sustainability project the winery has undertaken -- it also bears the Salmon-Safe and LIVE (Low Impact Viticulture and Enology) certifications, as well as some organic acreage -- corks represent a key element of its green efforts.

"It fits our overall holistic approach. It seemed pointless to make wine naturally and then put it into a container that damages the environment," Jim Bernau, CEO of Willamette Valley Vineyards, told Tilde Herrera. "We're trying to make sure our packaging, to the extent we possibly can, is made as sustainably as possible."

And communicating those efforts to shoppers is important to WVV, Bernau (pictured at left) said. "I do believe there is a segment of population where this is really import to them. They really get it. It impacts their shopping choices."

In addition to getting its wines on those shoppers' radar screens, highlighting green certifications can also shift markets.

"Consumers can virtually change the world," Bernau said. "It doesn't take very many of them. If they can change the demand by 15 percent, you're going to get a CEO's attention."

But WVV is also taking a somewhat unexpected route for eliminating label confusion: It's part of a new label certification, Oregon Certified Sustainable Wine. "The intention was to eliminate the confusion the consumer was faced with," Bernau said, explaining that the OCSW label means that the wine itself was certified under at least one of five certifications: LIVE, USDA Organic, Demeter Biodynamic, Food Alliance and Salmon-Safe.

"Our trade customers kept telling us to keep it simple and send a unified message -- all the different certifications were confusing to their customers," Bernau said.

Even with the umbrella certification of OCSW in place -- it launched in April -- WVV had to choose which certifications it would earn, and LIVE met the bill for what Bernau described as broader protections for the environment, including restrictions on water and pesticide use, and an emphasis on soil conservation and biodiversity.

"his approach provides broader protection to the environment, recognizes agricultural variability and is certified by third party inspection including soil and plant testing," Bernau explained.

The Value Citigroup Places on Eco-Labels

I spoke with Bruce Schlein, vice President of Corporate Sustainability at Citigroup, about the company's work with Rainforest Alliance. As an internal advisory group to Citi's businesses, operations and foundations,Schlein said that certifications are critical to his work, most importantly with regards to evaluating whether projects meet Citi's environmental and social risk policies.

"We rely on [certifications] in terms of how we evaluate various project financings," Schlein explained, offering the example of whether or not Citi would fund a pulp and paper mill. "In that respect, standards are important, in terms of the infrastructure that's needed to translate social and environmental benefits on the ground up through a supply chain."

Schlein said the proliferation of eco-standards is a big challenge for his work, because of the layer of complexity that competing and emerging standards can bring to evaluating projects.