Calories, cholesterol and carbon

Retailers set to ‘carbon label’ products

Are consumers ready for this? Tesco wants to stick carbon labels on everything it sells, to show the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during its production, transport and likely use. At the other end of the market, posh nosh maker Duchy Originals is planning something similar, so people can “know the cost of their food in greenhouse gas terms” just by looking on the packet.

Tesco’s announcement, part of the green overhaul of the business [see ‘Checkout revolution’], is a declaration of intent rather than an immediate action point; for the moment, the supermarket will simply put an aeroplane symbol on products that have been air freighted into the UK. M&S is doing much the same thing. Duchy Originals, for its part, is still at the stage of undertaking lifecycle analyses of its products.

The announcements came several months after a Carbon Trust survey revealed that two-thirds of consumers want to know the carbon footprint of the products they buy, and are more likely to buy those with a lower impact. The retailers have now really opened this up as a hot political issue, focusing attention on the challenges involved in counting carbon - and getting the message across to customers in the most useful way. As Tesco says, it is still to come up with a “universally accepted and commonly understood” measuring system.

Sally Uren, director of Forum for the Future’s Business Programme, welcomes the fact that both a niche company and a global brand want to bring climate change home to their customers. But, she says, a great deal of thought must be given to the way they present the information. “It’s doubtful that consumers would understand the significance a ‘grams of carbon dioxide’ label. However, with the emergence of a much more carbon-literate consumer in the near future, a percentage of their  ‘daily allowance of carbon’ might be more appropriate. That’s if we are able to agree on what that actually is.” - Hannah Bullock

11 March 2007

Hannah Bullock