Brit's Eye View: Is carbon labeling a good idea?

Can a bag of potato chips point the way to saving the planet?

Posted by Peter Madden (Guest Contributor) at 6:52 AM on 30 May 2007

Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

Can a bag of potato chips point the way to saving the planet?

In the U.K., we have started down the path of putting "carbon labels" on products. Tesco, our biggest supermarket chain, has said they will label every product they sell. The Carbon Trust, a government agency, has already produced a prototype label and is trying it out on shampoo, a fruit juice, and a bag of potato chips.

Clearly we do need to measure and manage carbon. A lot has been done to calculate and reduce the direct climate impacts of companies. Now attention is shifting to the wider climate-change footprint; businesses are looking up and down the supply chain.

Labeling is a great idea in principle. We have seen labels like fair-trade, organic, energy-rating, and marine stewardship engage consumers, change production, and move markets. And on climate change, consumers tell us they want simple, straightforward choices that are guaranteed to make a difference.

The environmental community here is very excited about the prospect of carbon labeling. However, we have already realized that it is going to be much more difficult than we first thought.

What exactly should we measure? Where do we start and stop? The Carbon Trust trials have looked at the "embedded" carbon in a product by the time it reaches the shelves in the shop. So, for example, the potato chips have a little label saying that they have taken 78 grams of carbon to produce. This is complicated enough, because the label has to reflect all the CO2 emitted while growing the potatoes and vegetable oil (pesticides, fertilizers, tractor fuel, etc.) as well as manufacturing, packaging, and transporting the chips.

But if we just measure this "embedded carbon" up to the point where the product is sold, what about the carbon dioxide generated in use? For many items, such as computers, washing machines, or cars, the CO2 produced while the product is being used is way more important than the CO2 in its manufacture. If we just measure embedded carbon, then an old-style incandescent light bulb would score better than an energy-efficient one. This would clearly be ludicrous. However, doing a full life-cycle assessment of every product before it gets a label is also going to be a huge -- and expensive -- undertaking. You can imagine all the consultants rubbing their hands in anticipation.

Of all the thousands of products out there, where should we start? Do we focus on the top sellers? The easiest to measure? Those that are most intelligible to consumers? Or, as I favor, those products with the biggest carbon impact?

This raises a fundamental question about what we are trying to do with a label. How useful is it to a shopper to be able to compare the climate-change impact of one tin of baked beans over another? And if a bag of potato chips represents 76 grams of carbon, is that a good or bad thing?

I certainly don't want people thinking that by buying one type of chips rather than another, they have done something meaningful on climate change. It would probably be a million times more effective for them to buy a fuel-efficient car instead of a gas guzzler or to change the way they heat their home.

When the final version of the label starts appearing in our shops, we will also have to get the communication right. Shoppers are likely to be left pretty confused by "grams of carbon dioxide." You can imagine them asking: "How does a gas weigh grams?" and "What is carbon doing in my chips?"

At the moment in the U.K., we are working hard to hold all the NGOs and big food companies together on this. We want to agree on a single methodology that everyone can follow. This should be simple and cheap enough to do in the real world, but robust enough to be credible. Ideally, we also want to see one universal label for shoppers, one that is independently guaranteed.

In the last big green consumer wave, people lost confidence because of the competing, confusing, and sometimes counterfeit claims made for "environment-friendly" products. This time 'round we have the chance to get it right.

For story: Brit's Eye View: Is carbon labeling a good idea?
10 Comments | Post a Comment

numbers

I'd get a great kick out of the numbers. Maybe that's my semi-geek, science and engineering, background coming through. (I hope only "semi")

Another numbers fiend and I traded some interpretations of those chip results here: Fat Knowledge

I think the numbers would help us get real about CO2 and the energy intensity beneath the things we buy.

But ... I can see how it would be a horrible burden for the producer as well. That's especially true for things like fruit and vegetable produce that flow through the system without much packaging. Who's going to do the math for Chilean grapes and for California grapes?

(BTW, it is interesting that the drive to buy chips likely uses more fuel and produces more CO2 than making the chips. THAT is the kind of thing that the numbers can teach.)

Maybe the answer is to do a range of "CO2/energy life stories" on a hundred or so products ... just so we get a better handle on things than our current badly-numbered intuitions.

In some cases things may be better than the worst case, scare stories, thrown around. And in others, I'm sure, a "green" alternative will be found lacking.

by odograph at 7:31 AM on 30 May 2007

farmer's market?

Oh, how good is the math going to be down at the farmer's market?

I've talked in the past about the affect of driving a couple hundred pounds of produce a hundred miles in a beat up van or pick-up. Some ugly numbers could (if calculated honestly) show up in politically-correct places.

by odograph at 7:34 AM on 30 May 2007

How 'bout we just tax it

I like the labelling idea - but the article correctly points out how difficult this is.

The best solution is simply to tax carbon - this way, everyone who generates CO2 while making the product would have to pay for it. These additional costs would force them to raise their prices (or become more efficient or use renewables). In the end, the consumer doesn't have to read the label - only the price tag. Carbon-intensive products would simply be more expensive.

by Bikechess at 8:56 AM on 30 May 2007

Use the existing accounting mechanisms

The simple way to do this is to assign a carbon-cost (in say carbon-pence/kg or grams/kg) to every primary fuel source (e.g. oil or gas at the beach or import terminal, coal at the minehead, etc). From that point on in the supply chain every current monetary transaction (including corporation-internal) would be mirrored with a carbon-cost transaction. Every spreadsheet would be duplicated (one for money, one for carbon). Transaction prices would be doublets - one for money, one for carbon. At the level of the individual consumer, the carbon "price" would be displayed to the consumer, but of course not collected.

This might sound like a lot of work, but it is unlikely to be any more than all the work involved in tracking carbon any other way. It would be easy enough for companies to duplicate spreadsheets, and there are not that many accounting software packages that would need to be modified. The beauty is it leverages the existing accounting mechanisms, documents and workflows.

Individuals could also carry a carbon-card which adds up their carbon purchases, letting them know what their carbon footprint is.

Imports are the biggest headache. The embodied carbon would need to be estimated. But that's going to have to be done anyway - at least this proposal would mean the domestic economy could deal with carbon accounting easily.

Eventually it might be decided that it would just be simpler to convert the carbon-price at source to a monetary price, and let it all flow through to the consumer in the price, rather than making people look at both price and carbon. The revenue thus raised (from the carbon-price at source) could be used to retire regressive or anti-employment taxes.

by ngoddard at 9:00 AM on 30 May 2007

Great idea

Sounds like coming up with the process of measuring carbon will be a headache but I think it needs to be done and will be very valuable for consumers. Yes, its obvious that the products you buy from overseas are going to have high carbon footprints, but it's good to be reminded of that with an actual number.

Also, why only focus on carbon? What about other greenhouse gases such as methane? Products that come from livestock, such as meat, leather and cows, would have a particularly high methane footprint since cows put such large amounts of methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It would be great for all those meat eating "environmentalists" to be reminded of how climate-unfriendly meat truly is.

by amc89 at 11:21 AM on 30 May 2007

label laws need enforcement

I can hear the stampede already..."I buy at EcoGrocerX and they carry only top of the line carbon-neutral products...don't you just adore those people there..?"

By this I mean I am both repulsed and attracted by the concept. Like other enviro-labelling the certification process is going to be key. Getting a carbon-tax in place is actually a far better and more rational policy, but then again, who said we were a rational species.

Whoever proposed that it would be easy to "just" duplicate excel sheets and make simple changes to accounting systems, does NOT get to the IT departments of large organizations often, that is for sure. Nonetheless, the tools available for enabling carbon-accounting-transactions is a very intriguing notion - a full accounting requirement. Going way, way beyond labelling, but maybe worth exploration. What would be needed are transaction standards, more akin to those used in the mortgage transaction engines than in the regulatory space.

Could business processing management (ala IBM and others ) be brought to this problem?

by James Dailey at 3:52 PM on 30 May 2007
[ Parent ]

calculating trade-ins

What I like about the idea of a carbon label is that it allows consumers to calculate the trade-offs of buying more efficient replacements for cars, home appliances, computers and other carbon producing devices. With the carbon label the calculation of when to replace becomes very similar to the monetary calculation consumers are used to making already. This also allows consumers to be smart about prioritizing the replacement of their carbon producing devices. I can determine that replacing my computer is a better carbon investment than replacing my TV.

by ph0852 at 6:47 PM on 30 May 2007

Use vs Production

I thought the carbon footprint on the manufacture and disposal of a car produced more carbon than use through the entire life of said car? Forget where i read that but that was my impresion.

Can anyone clarify?

by Drison at 12:30 PM on 31 May 2007

google

there's a "google answer" on that:

"Much less energy is used to manufacture a vehicle than is used by the vehicle during its useful lifetime so a small improvement in fuel efficency would have a significent impact on the energy footprint of the motor vehicle industry."

more here

by odograph at 1:44 PM on 31 May 2007

Good read

Thank for the response. He was very thorough in his answer.

by Drison at 8:56 AM on 01 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

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