Check-out Carbon report leads to Carbon Labelling debate
3rd July 2008 by Alex Briggs1 Comment
Blog posts on events are supposed to be written immediately following the event or not at all. I am going to break that rule and write about a great Carbon Labelling event that took place on Monday, June 30th at the Lloyd’s Register HQ in London.
Forum for the Future, the sustainability charity in the UK, supported by Lloyd’s Register, has just published Check-out Carbon , a report based on consumer research and expert interviews on consumer attitudes towards carbon labelling of products.
The Carbon Trust’s Euan Murray was on the panel, as would be expected of the organisation that brought carbon labelling to the market with their work with Walker’s Crisps, Innocent Drinks and Boots. Peter Madden, Forum’s CEO was on the panel, introducing some of the top-line findings in the report. Ian Hodgskinson, MD for Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) was the chairman. There were also two unannounced panellists who turned out to add a great deal to discussion, Katherine Symonds from Tesco and Terence Ilott from DEFRA.
Dan Crossley and Tom Berry, the authors, both from Forum for the Future, were also in attendance. Dan, when asked the findings in the report, said, “Probably the most important thing that came out of the report, was the need to really prioritise and not just to slap a carbon label on every single product that’s out there.” Peter Madden, the Forum CEO, commented that 2/3 of respondents believed it was the role of government and business to remove non environmentally friendly products from the shelves.
Following an introduction from each of the panellists, there was an hour plus discussion. An informed audience of 50+ people from government and business had some interesting questions and insights. A member of the audience asked the best one, “I would just like to hear a bit more from the panel about how they are going to deal with the sustainability trade offs that might emerge when labelling more products with the carbon label, so you know, if a product is fair trade or organic for example, and it might have a higher carbon footprint, how are we going to communicate that to consumers because potentially conflicting labels haven’t been that good a way to do that.” The panel was exceptional in admitting they don’t have the answer, but that they have also recognised this as a key issue that will have to be addressed.
The report is now available for download.
Also, there is a podcast on this site that was recorded at the event, with quotes from all of the panellists and the authors of the report.
Katherine from Tesco ended the event with this, “So, what is our goal. Well, this is very much a journey, we have taken the first steps working with those people that we have worked with thus far, its really exciting where we have got to, we are learning so much everyday that label is out there and that’s just a taste of understanding where that goes next and how that can become a universal measure.”
3rd August 2008 at 2:56 pm
Thanks !