Rival carbon labelling standards race for acceptance

Danny Bradbury, BusinessGreen 24 Jun 2008

Walk into a supermarket and, depending on which country you're in, you can read a label that tells you how fat a product will make you, and how much of that fat is transfat that will kill you even sooner.

That is pretty important from a public health perspective, but what about environmental health? With the US government finally admitting that carbon emissions are affecting the planet's climate, the debate over carbon labelling is heating up (no pun intended).

More than one organisation has latched on to this idea. The UK's Carbon Trust piloted its carbon-labelling programme across the UK this year. Walker's Snacks has signed up to the scheme, as has Innocent Drinks, while Tesco is also labelling some products with the Trust's mark.

Carbon Label California is similarly piloting a labelling scheme on the other side of the pond. The organisation is working with the California Air Resources Board to try and get a voluntary carbon label in place. Co-founder Matthew Newman believes that it could work in concert with a cap and trade initiative, such as the one proposed by Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner.

"It's also the kind of policy that has the potential to impact international actors, which is something that cap and trade can't do," Newman says. Analysing a product's whole supply chain would stop companies offshoring the dirty part of their operation to countries like China, where domestic environmental regulations would not apply.

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Will eco-labeling contribute to consumer shopping confusion?

Posted by Ben Tuxworth (Guest Contributor) at 3:34 PM on 09 Jul 2008

British supermarket shoppers face increasingly bewildering claims about the ethical qualities of products. In one of retail giant Tesco's stores, shoppers can opt for goods branded with the Soil Association's organic standard, the Fairtrade Foundation's logo, the British Farm standard, or chain-of-custody marks from the Marine Stewardship and Forest Stewardship Councils. They can linger over footprint information from the Carbon Trust or dolphin-based evaluation of the fishing methods used to catch their tuna. On another spectrum altogether, they are offered "Finest" and "Value" brands on Tesco's own goods. And on most products they're also expected to wade through nutritional assessments, guideline daily amounts, glycemic index counts, information on allergies, and of course, brand, quantity, and price.

As one weary consumer observed, supermarket shopping has become more like visiting a museum, with plenty to read and a clear educational agenda. Check-Out Carbon, a new report from my organization Forum for the Future, explores attempts to reduce the carbon intensity of the weekly shopping trip, and makes challenging reading for anyone hoping shoppers are taking it all in. After interviewing industry experts, conducting focus groups with consumers, and commissioning a survey of 1,000 U.K. adults, we found a surprising consensus: Despite the race to get ethically branded goods into stores, we're all expecting too much of shopper choice.

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Trust, Transparency and Traceability — The New Watchwords of Food Safety

From: , Frankly CSR, More from this Affiliate
Published March 18, 2008 09:41 AM

For many companies product safety is a fundamental component of their CSR efforts. But in the last year or two no market has had to re-evaluate its product safety practices more than the food industry. Increasing health concerns by consumers, new government regulations, growing (often global) supply chains and increasingly competitive markets have all been influencing factors. And, of course, recent incidents like those at Topps Meat, Cargill, Westland Meat and Menu Foods — to name just a few — have not helped the food industry.

The Food Marketing Institute’s survey, “U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2007,” reported that consumer confidence in the safety of the food supply has dropped dramatically. Confidence had consistently hovered in the 80th percentile for years, but dropped to 66 percent, the lowest point since 1989. Consumer confidence in the safety of restaurant food is even lower, at 43 percent.

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Does the future have a label?

21 Jul 2008 | Author: Zara Maung, editor

Not all products have eco-labelling, and consumers say they don’t make sense anyway. We investigate the problems with carbon tags and ask if the right message is getting across

What was the first thing your company did when it started to cut its carbon emissions? Adjust its transport scheme? Educate employees about energy wasting? Look into greener building practices? Or confiscate air-freighted green beans from the office canteen?

This last option may seem absurd, but supermarket customers, hit with eco-labels on air-freighted food since last year, could be forgiven for thinking that flying beans into the UK is one of our biggest carbon-wasting activities.

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Package Printers, Manufacturers Discuss Sustainability Efforts

Kevin Rabinovitch, director of sustainability for Mars North America, warns CPGs and converters to look beyond the direct impacts of their material and process choices, Converting Magazine reports. Mars, for instance, has analyzed the GHG emissions from the virgin production, recycling and disposal of four kinds of paperboard, eight types of plastic, glass, steel and aluminum.

Barbara McCutchan, director of enterprise stewardship and sustainability at paperboard-packaging company Meadwestvaco Corp., says sustainable packaging must equally protect the product and promote the brand. Renewable and non-renewable resources are investigated by MeadWestvaco to guarantee fiber sourcing via forest certification.

Sustainability was present in nearly each and every booth at last month’s Packaging Summit in Chicago, Barry Sanel of Barry Sanel Packaging Advisors wrote in a recent EL column.

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