Can we trust carbon labeling? 7

Comments View as Flat

1. 

   scatter Posted 10:03 pm
   03 Mar 2008

   A mirage?"Ultimately, a system of comprehensive and reliable emissions measurements is a mirage."
   At the moment maybe but perhaps not in the future.
   What if full carbon accountancy for all products and services were introduced across the globe?
   How about if every company was obliged to submit accounts, signed off by a carbon accountant, which provided a true and fair picture of the organisation's carbon footprint and product carbon intensity, just as they are obliged to submit finanical accounts?
   It would be an enormous task no doubt but if we really want to move towards a true low carbon society I think it'll be necessary.
   RFID technology would help greatly as it would enable products, their components and transport pathways to be tracked from birth to recycling.

   Permalink

2. 

   Angry African Posted 12:19 am
   04 Mar 2008

   And Africa and carbon?Africa might suffer more from the changing climate than any other continent. Especially because of the lack of social safety nets provided by governments. Is there a solution for Africa when they have so much else to focus on - health, poverty, war and hunger? Or are we caught in a Catch 22 with no sustainable solutions? More on this in my blog at http://angryafrican.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/solving-the- ...

   Permalink

3. 

   amazingdrx Posted 12:30 am
   04 Mar 2008

   MirageAbsolutely.  This is the quantitative fallacy at it's worst.  It's why carbon trading will never work either.
   Turn the food of life into a numbers game and you turn life itself into a numbers game.  Quality becomes secondary.
   Life with hollow status seeking lack of any real value system becomes the norm.  
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

   Permalink

4. 

   scatter Posted 12:52 am
   04 Mar 2008

   Poetic, but I'm not sure I agree with you thereThere's no intention to reduce "life" to numbers; but to make an attempt to estimate where the main sources of carbon lie.
   How do you know where to implement cost effective carbon reduction measures if you don't know at which phase of a product's life cycle the main sources of carbon are?
   For the bulk of energy using products it's quite easy - the in use phase - but there's also a fair amount of carbon that could be saved in the other phases.
   For non-EUPs, the carbon lies in production, distribution and recycling. But where exactly? Is it more effective to refine your component manufacturing processes or assembly processes? Or perhaps focussing on distribution would be better? How will we know until we have an idea of where the carbon comes from? Ultimately we want to refine all phases but we need the big wins first.

   Permalink

5. 

   amazingdrx Posted 1:58 am
   04 Mar 2008

   IntentThe main intent is to reduce life to quanities that can be traded, pure profits being made by the traders, indpendent of any reality on the ground.  
   The milk company the immediate example.  sell more milk through green labeling. Then on to carbon credit sales outfits.  The milk corporation can advertise, carbon free milk!  By buying carbon credits equal to the advertised quantity.  Does that mean they saved that much carbon per gallon?  
   It's all being put on a trading platform, climate disaster, life and death, starvation and war.
   Enoughing quantification is done right now to get this green energy/job revolution going.  Just put up 10 cents per solar, wind, or biogas kwh, and 5 cents for each kwh saved.  Forget all this calculation of artificial "instruments".
   That's what they call them, the hedge fundies, financial instruments.  Don't let them use their instruments to try and fix climate problems.  
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

   Permalink

6. 

   kmp Posted 2:31 am
   04 Mar 2008

   IntentWith respect to Tesco, I can see that their intent may be to get more customers shopping at their stores, rather than a competitor's, based on the existence of carbon labeling, but, at the end of the day, if that means more people are shopping at Tesco's and buying foods with a lesser carbon footprint, is that not a good thing?
   While there may be financial gain as a motive, surely it cannot be Tesco's sole motivation; life cycle analysis IS endlessly complicated and I can't imagine it is cheap.  
   If the main intent is to provide customers with the tools with which to make an informed choice about the carbon footprint of various foodstuffs, why not employ a simple scale rating instead of a specific carbon life-cycle analysis of every food product?  With the rate of new food products yearly, you would never be able to keep up with the labeling.
   I would propose a simple scale, say 0 to 10, and then assign values to various categories that we know represent carbon expenditure:
   -packaging
   
   -processing
   
   -conventionally grown
   
   -distance traveled to market
   
   -distance traveled under refrigeration
   
   -weight of product shipped
   Thus, organic local lettuce from a farm ~30 miles away might have a very low number, say 0.5, while processed, sugary snacks made in China would be close to 10. These choices might be obvious to consumers, but things like wine might be a surprise - a local, organic wine might still have a 2 or 3 because of the weight in shipping, while a magnum might be more carbon-effective due to less packaging (per glass of wine).  Such a rating scale could get more specific, say a scale of 0 to 100, and take into account several layers of packaging, or the ease & availability of recycling (glass bottles vs. juice boxes), and a more complex calculation of distance traveled.  Even on a 100-point scale, this seems a much easier task than a full life-cycle analysis, and something that, once standard parameters have been established, Tesco could implement fairly easily with a set of check-boxes and yes/no questions that determine the carbon "score."
   This way there would be less questioning of the assumptions behind the actual carbon footprint of any one foodstuff, and more of a good/bad/medium approach to provide the customer with more information than they have now.

   Permalink

7. 

   scatter Posted 2:34 am
   04 Mar 2008

   That easy eh?I'm not talking about carbon trading or offsetting.
   I'm talking about reducing the carbon intensity of the goods that make our society tick. Not a futile exercise in my view, in fact it's absolutely critical if we're to achieve a low carbon society.

   Permalink