the problem with carbon labeling

A few days ago, I met the head of sustainability for a British retailer, and he said he was conflicted about carbon labeling.  There's a big push here to add a numeric carbon footprint to all consumer products (starting with a big announcement from Tesco last year).  It seems like a good disclosure in spirit, and the sheer effort to measure the carbon footprint is a good thing, which leads to ideas on how to reduce that footprint. 

But, labeling on packaging is a complicated one for consumers.  For one thing, it's confusing.  Do consumers really understand what a 75g carbon label on a bag of crisps means?  For another thing, it can create mixed messages like the one in this cartoon.

Comments

But how march carbon will generated figuring out all those carbon footprints?

[Beth Nori]

Totally agree. I would actually REALLY like to know the carbon footprint of the products I buy, but you shouldn't need an Advanced Math degree to figure it out. A while ago my husband suggested a really simple method of "scoring" a product... color coding, and a number coded from 1-5. Keep it simple and it might actually go mainstream! But since we can't even do that with nutrition labels, I'm not sure we have a lot of hope.