Carbon footprinting standard: Ready by 2008

As if the fat and salt content weren’t enough, people eating a bag of Walkers crisps since April have also had to consider a label explaining the amount of carbon emitted to create and deliver the product.

Shoppers at Boots can find pamphlets at tills about carbon emissions created from Boot’s Botanics shampoos, and Innocent smoothie fans are able to log onto the company website to learn about the emissions from its juices.

The appearance of these carbon labels is the culmination of a pilot study into carbon footprinting that is now being extended to apply to a wider range of products and services.

Led by BSI British Standards, with Carbon Trust and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as co-sponsors, the project aims to produce a “publicly available specification” for the measurement of the embodied greenhouse gases in everything from chocolate bars to paving stones to internet banking.

A draft standard has been produced and is now going through a two-stage consultation process that will bring together comments from over 600 businesses, trade associations, academics, NGOs and government. The voluntary standard is expected to be ready by summer 2008.

Standards test drive

The Carbon Trust is working with nine partners to road test the draft standard. Products being tested include Cadbury Schweppes’ Cadburys Dairy Milk bar, Halifax’s Web Saver Account, Andrex toilet tissue from Kimberly-Clark and Fosters lager from Scottish & Newcastle.

In October the trust announced it would work with Tesco to measure the carbon footprint of 30 of its own-brand products.

“The objective,” says Euan Murray, strategy manager at the Carbon Trust, “is to create something that everyone can use, regardless of sector and regardless of company size.” Creating a standard system, he says, will allow consumers and companies to make fair comparisons between different products and services.

A key point for discussion during the consultation process is how far measurement should extend into the supply chain.

In the case of Walkers crisps, PepsiCo (Walkers’ parent company) and Carbon Trust started with the fertilisers used in the soil, then proceeded to the farmer ploughing the field, the manufacturing process, packaging, distribution, retailing and finally to the disposal of the packets at the end of their life. Disposal includes transport from disposal site to the recycling point or landfill site, as well as emissions from the recycling or landfill process. In the case of landfill, this extends to the product reaching its final state of decomposition.

Murray recognises that work still needs to be done to ensure boundaries are in the right place. He says there has to be a balance between what is credible and what is practical: “We are interested in the emissions to run the production line, but not in the emissions to make the white jacket that the engineers wear.”

Particular concern has been raised in the British media about measuring products such as fruit or vegetables shipped or flown in from abroad, especially from developing countries.


" Half of the 1,000 people interviewed by Populus in research for Walkers said they were more likely to buy a product with a carbon label"


Murray questions whether an annual average should be taken of the carbon emissions from raw foodstuffs. “If a company uses strawberries, and for half the year they are grown in Scotland but the other half in Spain, is that the same product? Should it have the same footprint; should you take an average; or produce two different footprints?”

The labelling dilemma

BSI’s work is limited to defining the methodology for measuring a product’s carbon footprint. But once companies have gathered this information, the next issue is how to communicate it.

In its initial work with Walkers, Innocent and Boots, the Carbon Trust developed a carbon reduction label. This is printed on all Walkers crisp flavours and displays the amount of CO2 emitted (75 grams in the case of cheese and onion), as well as a downward arrow which denotes the company’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions. If a company fails to make a reduction in two years, it loses the right to use the label.

Steve John, head of corporate communications at PepsiCo UK & Ireland, is confident the label is sending out a strong message to consumers. “Seventy-five grams doesn’t mean much to consumers as an abstract number,” he admits, “but it gives a clear indication that we have taken the trouble to measure.”

Half of the 1,000 people interviewed by Populus in research for Walkers said they were more likely to buy a product with a carbon label, and 69% said the label demonstrated that a company is committed to reducing its carbon emissions.

What’s more, says John, “having the number on the pack means that every business decision we take is looked at through the lens of carbon.”

Other companies are less willing to be pushed down the carbon labelling route, however. Ian Walsh, head of environment at Cadbury Schweppes, supports the development of standard methodology for measuring carbon footprints, but remains sceptical of carbon labelling.

He says a number of factors can change in the business on a daily basis which can affect the carbon emissions of its products. “If we commit to buying a certain quantity of packaging material, what happens if something changes the next day? Do we scrap all the packaging, or do we risk being criticised by NGOs or Trading Standards for false advertising?”

The Carbon Trust says it is mindful that there are alternative ways to communicate carbon footprint information – through point of sale literature, for example, or on company websites.

Measuring the big emitters

The next step for carbon footprinting is its use by companies responsible for heavy carbon emissions. Murray says he has been contacted by companies in the airline and automotive industries and this is something the project will be working on in the “not too distant future”.

Existing schemes for electronics and transport, such as the UK government’s online carbon calculator, measure emissions in the usage phase, meaning the carbon emitted by the car when driving or by the washing machine when washing.

It’s likely, Murray says, that the usage phase generates the greatest emissions from these sectors, so this is the best place to start. But there is still a need to think about manufacture, transport and disposal. He says the same logic applies for a car as for a bag of crisps; there are simply more raw materials and processes to go through.

“There is no doubt that there is complexity in globalised supply chains that we have to take account of,” says Murray. “Companies are getting increasingly savvy about the information they gather in production processes. It’s a case of making the most of that information rather than creating something new.”


Carbon footprinting: The facts

· BSI British Standards is working with Carbon Trust and Defra to produce a draft standard to measure the carbon emissions in products and services.

· Once completed the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) will ensure a consistent and comparable approach to supply-chain measurement of embodied greenhouse gases in products and services across markets.

· It will help companies understand the life-cycle climate change impacts of their products and highlight emissions reduction opportunities.

· This is the first step towards an internationally agreed standard for measuring embodied GHG emissions.

· Once companies have determined the carbon emissions from products and services, they can decide how to communicate that information.

· The Carbon Trust has already developed a carbon-reduction label that denotes the amount of carbon emissions from a product and a commitment by the company to reduce the figure.