Carbon labels: let’s talk numbers first

Carbon labels on food products are slowly crawling their way into supermarkets. This morning, I had a quick search in my local store, and found a package with a carbon label on it.

The product I found was the ProActive spread, which shows a 'climate footprint' (as they call it) of 0.3 kg CO? equivalent per 100 grams of product (= 3 kg CO? equivalent per kg product).

But what does this number say? Is it low, medium, high? What is the benchmark we can potentially measure it against??

Will ProActiv get a red or green sustainability label?

The European Union is thinking about the introduction of "traffic light" labels, using letters and colours to indicate the level of emissions associated with the product in question. The inspiration has come from the labels indicating the energy efficiency of products or houses, which are familiar to most of us.

In France, some food chains and online food shops already use this: The Eco-Score, very much based on the colour system.

ProActiv is based on 100% vegetable fats and oils. A recent study, looked at 212 plant-based fat spreads, 16 plant-based creams and 40 dairy alternatives sold in 21 countries. The data showed that vegetable fat spreads have a lower carbon impact per kg of product than dairy-based butters. On average the plant based products had an average of 3.3 kg CO? equivalent per kg product and for the dairy butters the average was 12.1.?

So based on this study and the potential traffic light labelling system, will ProActiv (with a carbon impact of 3 kg CO? equivalent per kg product) get a green label, because it is lower than the average / available information we have so far? And who will decide and give these labels in the future? A third party? Now, it is often the companies themselves that generate the environmental information and make it available to consumers.

If you don’t know where you stand, how do you know where you are going?

Although the obliged carbon labelling is coming in the EU, I wonder how this will actually be in practice. Are we continue to 'just' put a number on the package, or also give it a colour? I feel we are still in the phase where we are measuring the carbon impact of food products and we just want to get the numbers out there, adn this is what companies already doing to be prepared. Once we know the numbers we can improve. Because if you don’t know where you stand, how do you know where you are going?

This is why there is a need to create benchmarks and provide transparency and awareness about the large variety of carbon impact figures. Not only for the different products and producers, but also to get more consistency between different?LCA software used.

The label jungle: Can consumers still make informed choices?

Coming back to the vegetable spread I found in the supermarket. This product is known to lower cholesterol levels and has a so-called health claim on the package. So I assume most people buy this product because of this. In the Netherlands, a health insurance company even compensates the costs of it when patients are diagnosed with a high cholesterol level.?So, will people stop buying this if they see that this product has a negative impact on the environment?

How consumers will react to carbon levels will be different between regions, and generations I guess. But sustainability labels really can indeed influence consumers' choices, and persuade them to choose the least polluting food, as shown by research from the University of Oxford. But at the same time, we already drown in the amount of food labels, so how to stand out?

But the phase we are in (getting the numbers out there) is a positive development. Many stakeholders in the food production chain have started to calculate the environmental impact of their products and critically look at their production processes. And this is great news! The carbon impact labels that are attached to that will become a norm in the future. It should help consumers make more informed choices on what they put on the menu. And this in turn will drive food producers to improve the numbers step-by-step.