More Than Living

What is carbon labelling?Counting carbon dioxide emissions to change lifestyles

With the evid­ence for global warm­ing getter starker, a new European carbon-​​trading scheme in place and an Amer­ican pres­id­ent who seems to have pri­or­it­ised the envir­on­ment, it seems that we’re all going to be seeing a lot more about carbon in our every­day lives.

And if – as has been sug­ges­ted – this leads to “carbon allow­ances” for indi­vidual people as well as nations, we might need to count the CO2 we use as care­fully as we count the money we spend.

The trouble is, if you want to get an accur­ate idea of how much you’ve ’spent’, you’re going to run into a prob­lem. For most of things we do, there’s no number.

Enter carbon labelling – a concept that puts an envir­on­mental price on the things we buy, use and do every day.

The CO2-​​counting story so far

Argu­ably, the hous­ing market is the place which has seen the biggest applic­a­tion of carbon labelling so far in the UK. Since the intro­duc­tion of Energy Per­form­ance Cer­ti­fic­ates, all for-​​sale prop­er­ties have been accom­pan­ied by inform­a­tion on their carbon effi­ciency (and it’s not been pop­u­lar with every­one).

Retail com­pan­ies too have been attempt­ing to cal­cu­late the carbon cost of everything from crisps to hoodies.

Since 2006, the UK’s Carbon Trust has cal­cu­lated the product carbon foot­print (PCF) of over 75 products, under its Carbon Reduc­tion Label Scheme. The Trust’s draft stand­ard for cal­cu­lat­ing PCF was pub­lished in Octo­ber 2008 and shows the green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions from the full life-​​cycle of a product: from raw mater­ial pro­duc­tion (includ­ing pack­aging), man­u­fac­ture, trans­port and retail to use and disposal.

Among the com­pan­ies work­ing with the Trust to develop labels for their products are those from the cloth­ing, appli­ances, food and drink and fin­ance sec­tors.?

Sim­ilar Posts:

• Energy per­form­ance cer­ti­fic­ates (EPCs) are a waste of time
• Who are you trying to bio-​​​​fuel?
• Flights of fancy
• Can ret­ro­fit­ting make the UK’s hous­ing stock green enough?
• Green hol­i­days in Eng­land and around the world

Ori­gin­ally posted 2009-​​01-​​26 07:58:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments