Carbon footprint standard for all products drawn up by Government

The world’s first standard to measure the carbon footprint of every product in our shops will be launched tomorrow by the Government in an effort to end the continuing confusion over “eco-labels”.

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At the moment there are more than 300 “eco-labels” on the market, from the organic standard to food miles, all of which are confusing and exasperating to customers.

In an effort to simplify green labelling schemes and give the consumer the confidence to choose food which is genuinely environmentally friendly, the Carbon Trust, Defra and the British Standards Institute will this week launch the world’s first standard for measuring a product’s carbon footprint.

The document, known as a Publicly Available Specification or PAS 2050, will tell producers how to calculate a product’s carbon output, from the raw materials, through manufacturing and consumption, to the waste produced.

It will enable companies to estimate the amount of CO2 in grams used in the life of a product and therefore its potential impact on global warming.

The results will be displayed as a carbon footprint label, much like the number of calories, is currently shown on food.

Although it is a voluntary scheme and it is up to individual companies how they display the labels, big corporations like Walkers Crisps, Boots, Innocent and Tesco have already signed up. Coca Cola, Cadbury, Co-op and a range of smaller companies are looking into the scheme.

Eventually it is expected the label will be on all products in the same way as nutritional content is widely displayed.

Environmental groups praised the scheme for ending confusion and giving consumers who want to cut their carbon footprint a reliable label to make informed choices.

But consumer groups just said it was one more label to worry about and that it failed to take into account the environmental impact of products in other ways such as through chemical fertilisers.

Dr Graham Sinden, a technical manager at the Carbon Trust who helped to develop the PAS 2050, said that it would help producers to reduce their carbon footprint through understanding the carbon used in each stage of the product.

He said: “The value of this project is that when people look at these numbers there is some confidence there that a process was followed and the result is not just a random choice but a real reflection of the carbon impact of this product.”

But Lucy Yates, principal policy advocate at Consumer Focus, the Government’s own consumer watchdog, said companies should be careful about “overburdening” consumers with information.

By Louise Gray

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