Japan to Label Carbon Footprints of Products
Japan announced today that the country will soon be labeling goods with information about their carbon footprint, similar to the way nutrition labels are displayed. Reports the Agence France-Presse, the labeling will begin in April 2009 and is designed to raise awareness of global warming and the transport and delivery of food. A similar system exists at the British supermarket chain Tesco. From the article:
The ministry's research shows one example of carbon footprint using potato crisps.
A bag of crisps emits 75 grams (2.63 ounces) of carbon dioxide. Forty-four percent of the CO2 comes from growing potatoes and another 30 percent from production of the processed food.
Another 15 percent comes from the packaging, nine percent from delivery and two percent from disposal of the bag.
Over at the Huffington Post, Dave Burdick wonders how the labeling might change for Japanese foods that are exported, like Sapporo Beer. No word on this yet. And carbon labels aren't likely to come to most American goods for a while, though a similar bill was introduced to the California Assembly in February by Ira Ruskin.
Tags: Japan | environment
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Reader Comments
Not Difficult for this customer
I would like to see the carbon label. It will affect my purchasing decissions. Sure, I don't know all the science about global warming, but I do know that 75 grams of carbon is worse than 25 grams. The more information the label provides, including country of origin, the better for the public. That way they can make up their own minds and not leave them entirely to the distributer.
Difficult to consider for the average consumer
The problem is that the whole concept of carbon footprints is in my opinion difficult to understand for the average consumer and hence difficult to use for comparisons between products. You really don't have an idea whether 75 grams of carbon dioxide are good or bad and on its own, and considering that you're always hearing about how bad carbon dioxide is, you are left thinking that any amount is already bad so you're not really making a real difference.
You can try to educate the public and encourage them to make comparisons, along with more actions to take to be more environmentally friendly. But on its own the measure would be ignore by most consumers and make little difference.
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