Plan for carbon footprint on every label

By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 31/05/2007

The Government has taken the first step towards introducing carbon labelling for all products sold in shops.


	Consumers would see a product's carbon score

Plans have been unveiled to design a "carbon calculator" that could work out the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by everything from the production of a pack of tomatoes to a car.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs joined forces yesterday with the Carbon Trust, a Government advisory body, to try to agree how to measure greenhouse gases in the manufacturing process.

This would allow retailers eventually to label their products with a "carbon point" score in the same way that electrical appliances receive an energy score.

Some companies have tested a scheme, pioneered by the Carbon Trust, but most consumers have been baffled by what the labels mean. Walkers Crisps, one of the first to try the labelling system, prints a score of 75 grams on its cheese and onion crisps, but nowhere on the pack is this score explained.

By tying up with the Government, the Carbon Trust hopes to win over more manufacturers and retailers and develop a label that everyone - including consumers - is happy to use.

A spokesman for Defra said: "We need to look at cradle-to-grave emissions, whether it be a tomato, a CD or a car."

The research will take about 18 months and focus on which stages of the manufacturing process should be included in the calculation.

The carbon footprint of a beef steak, for instance, is likely to take into account the energy used to grow the wheat for the animal feed.

Marks & Spencer has been working with the Carbon Trust for the last few months to calculate the carbon footprints for the food that it sells. The retailer admits it is proving a highly complex job, especially calculating the greenhouse gases caused in the final stage of the product's life - when it is transported to a home, cooked, eaten and finally disposed of.

BSI British Standards will oversee the work and come up with a benchmark to avoid retailers and manufacturers trying to "out-green" each other. Nutritional labelling on food packaging has been undermined by disagreements between Tesco and Sainsbury's and between different manufacturers.

A spokesman for M&S said: "We would welcome a common approach for measuring the carbon footprint of products. It would certainly make sense for retailers and manufacturers to use the same process."

Michael Roberts, director of business environment at the CBI, the business group, said: "Consumers have a central role to play in meeting the challenge of climate change, and this scheme could enable businesses to help them make low-carbon choices."

Though the Walkers Crisps carbon labelling baffled many consumers, the Carbon Trust insisted it helped the food company radically reduce its carbon footprint.

The trust, as part of its research, discovered that farmers were hydrating potatoes to make them weigh more because they were being paid per tonne. Potatoes were stored in humidified sheds to increase their water content. Humidifiers use large amounts of energy and generate significant emissions.

Walkers was then frying the sliced potatoes to remove the moisture, increasing overall frying time and emissions.

By changing the way potatoes were traded - and making sure farmers were paid for potatoes with a low water content - the trust found that Walkers could save up to 9,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and £1.2 million a year.