The Dutch newspaper Trouw ran an article today stating that the French supermarket company Casino will start informing its customers about the foodmiles (or kilometers) of their house brand through labels (Trouw, September 4th 2007). The labels will be color coded and the recyclability of the packaging will be stated as well. They expect to have all of their 3000 products labeled by end of 2008 and have already taken action on some products: a cod filet that traveled 27.000 (!) kilometers before arriving at the store was taken out of the range. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of this initiative in other news sources.
Several other supermarket chains and retailers are exploring similar schemes, Tesco announced an initiative to start reporting the carbon footprint of the 70.000 products they carry back in January (The Guardian January 29th 2007), but have not implemented it yet due to the complexity of the measurement. Another illustration:Timberland, the US shoe brand, has looked into reporting the carbon footprint of their products. The difficulty they encountered was that they’d have to measure all the way down to the cows, which the real base of their supply chain and the largest contributor to the carbon footprint (Environmental Leader, March 28th 2007). One advantage Casino has is that they own their own distributor, Easydis.
With these labeling initiatives care should be taken to distinguish between foodmiles, being the distance a product (including all the separate components) traveled and the carbon footprint, which takes into account emissions of a particular mode of transport as well as the bulk and weight of the product. Laudable as they are in providing some much need transparency for consumers, the way in which such a label is implemented and what it will cover will be something to keep a sharp eye on once the system is in place.
These initiatives are a sure sign that green consumption is on the rise and major players see it as having great market potential, with Tesco accompanying their January 19th announcement with a £ 500 million (€ 740 million) pledge to turn “the fringe green lobby into a mass consumer movement” (The Independent, January 19th). And, coincidentally, today is the annual Dutch “Sustainable Tuesday”, a reference to the 3rd Tuesday in September when the cabinet budget for the year is traditionally announced. The theme? Putting Sustainable Consumption on the Menu.
