Can't See the Goods for All the New Labels in UK
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.19.07
British retailer Marks and Spencers is now labelling food that has been imported by air. Over 20 products, including beans, mangoes and strawberries are now marked, and it is expected that by the end of the year over 150 will be.
Guy Farrant, Director of Food, Marks & Spencer said 'our customers want to know more about how food is transported into the UK. We already label all our food with its country of origin, and in many cases we also include the name of the farmer on pack. We’re putting an aeroplane symbol on the small amount of food we transport by air because we know this is something our customers increasingly care about.' ::New Consumer
Meanwhile, the Carbon Trust is offering labels that show how much carbon was emitted in the manufacture and transport of the goods.
Euan Murray, the Carbon Trust's head of strategy, said the scheme was the culmination of two years' work with a number of companies.
"We quickly realised how valuable this sort of information was," he told BBC News. "We built up a profile, which has become known as the carbon footprint, of different products."
Mr Murray said the label would show how many grammes of carbon dioxide (CO2) had been emitted during the various stages of production, from the sourcing of raw materials, the manufacturing processes, to transporting the products to stores. ::BBC
The emerging labelling systems are encouraging - there are a couple of things to remember.
1. The methodology is crucial. Just like offsets, people can buy into green schemes without really questioning the work going on behind them. A particular vulnerability of labelling will be manufacturers assigning dirty parts of their operations to products they do not label.
2. Labelling is a voluntary approach and can only be expected to apply to specialist products. If we want more mainstream change in fast moving consumer goods, we should be looking at regulation.