Remember back in the old days when companies started labeling products with ‘made from recycled materials’ logos? People bought into it because it made a lot of sense to buy things like paper and plastics from recycled sources. The concept caught on like wildfire and started driving a whole new area in consumer marketing.
Now in the UK, product labeling has taken an entirely new direction, and Brits will soon get to know the carbon footprint of a popular beer brand too, reports The Guardian.
An innocuous brand of potato chips (or crisps if you’re a Brit) called Walkers have started labeling its carbon impact. It turns out that a 34.5g bag of Walkers chips (the cheese and onion flavor) costs the environment twice its weight (75g) in CO2e to produce. (Read on because we’re going to tell you how little it will cost to offset that.)
It took the Carbon Trust, an independent government-funded company, a year and a half for them to find a carbon label for the chips; they also made one for a shampoo from Boots drugstore (about 148g CO2e for a 250ml bottle) and a health drink “Innocent Smoothies” (about 225g CO2e for a 250ml bottle).
Is all this time and effort worth it? The Carbon Trust seems to think so. They argue that it will raise public awareness and expose “companies’ biggest carbon sins.” It will also help companies understand how to adjust their supply chain in the weakest carbon intensive links. Likely, business will become more profitable.
About seven companies have signed up to the Carbon Trust project. In the near future consumers will get to know the carbon impact of a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate bar, the carbon footprint of an iron, orange juice, lightbulbs, washing detergent and even some vegetables.
Andrex toilet tissue, and Foster’s lager will also be carbon labeled.
How does the Carbon Fund make the carbon count? From the cradle to the grave, they say. For the chips, the process began by calculating emissions of the fertilizers used, the farmer’s work in the field, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, retailing, and the disposal of the bag at the end of its life.
While the CO2e numbers on a bag of chips, shampoo, or even a bottle of beer might not mean a lot now, it will in the future when more and more companies join the labeling scheme.
This initiative also allows, points out one of our readers, a good argument for carbon offsetting, “I suspect that it will be able to show people how cheap it would be to offset the carbon emitted in the food we consume,” he says. “A poke in the eye for those who say carbon taxation would be prohibitive.”
That said, we took some of the quantities in the article, and translated them to carbon offset monetary terms using a midrange UK price of £10 per ton CO2e. And cheap offset prices we have found. Your wallet wouldn’t feel it at all.
If one gram is equal to one millionth of a metric ton, the price to offset a teeny tiny bag of chips or bottle of chips is absolutely negligible.
Let’s break it down:
A 34.5g bag of Walker’s chips produces 75g of CO2e.
That translates to 0.000 075 tons of CO2e.
Multiply that by an offsetting cost of about £10 and the grand total cost to offset your chips equals…are you ready? It equals 0.075 pence
A 250ml bottle of Boots shampoo = 0.148 pence
A 250ml smoothie drink = 0.225 pence
We also recommend our readers to get acquainted with the Carbon Disclosure Project which is aiming to do the same thing as the Carbon Trust, but for large companies as a whole. The independent non-profit is working with some of the world’s largest companies to help them assess their impact on climate change.
Choose your country here to see their impact so far. In the US they list AT&T, Avon, Abbott Laboratories, and this is just a few from the “A” section.
Dontcha think it’s weird that a lowly bag of potato chips may go down in history as helping humanity account for its carbon sins? We don’t care as long as the carbon emissions accounting movement grows. Until more companies get there, at Carbon Catalog you can find lists of carbon offset providers from around the world. Before companies help consumers pay for the impact of goods produced (if that happens at all), voluntary carbon offsetting acts of kindness can be done by you.