Implementation of sustainability criteria, both in legal frameworks and voluntary sustainability standards, is an urgent and important issue. In the article, three less state-centric governance approaches and their capacity to be used to implement sustainability criteria have been investigated. The chosen approaches are good governance, multi-level governance and selfgovernance. Their potential strengths and weaknesses have been pointed out. The research indicates that sustainability criteria can be implemented in different ways, which have the potential to highlight, strengthen or weaken different aspects of their function. The use of different governance approaches, or their combinations, can lead to different implementation results for the same sustainability criterion. The choice of an appropriate governance approach depends on the circumstances in each case, on the purpose of using sustainability criteria and on the results that are strived at. Possibilities to establish a profitable international regime with homogeneous requirements and sustainability criteria for a certain production branch or a product should be explored .The article suggests that the most promising solution is to combine the use of legal regulations (juridical steering) with less hierarchical and less state-centric governance approaches, involving the participation of different groups of interested actors. Elements of good governance, multi-level governance and self-governance can be efficiently incorporated in legal frameworks and voluntary sustainability standards with sustainability criteria .Further research and case study analysis in this area are recommended.