Food Emission Labels, Giving Us a Choice.
Carbon emission food labels give us the power to choose the foods we want and make our own choices about sustainability.
We buy free-range eggs to support better living for hens, free-range or organic pork and beef to give pigs and cows better conditions, and we buy biodegradable plastics to keep the environment clean.
Why then can’t we choose our food sustainably too?
This opinion piece article was written as part of the Science Politics course at the Centre for Public Awareness of Science.
Food production is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse emissions, changing our diets changes the way industry produces food (Camilleri et al., 2018).
If we choose more sustainably produced food, then that incentivises food producers to be more sustainable. This, in turn, makes our food choices a major way to reduce the environmental impact of food production.
Choice.
We tend to underestimate how much of a carbon footprint foods actually have, there are thousands of food products in-store with multiple brands for the same item with no easy to interpret scale to judge them by (Camilleri et al., 2018).
Do you know how much of a carbon footprint a bag of potato chips vs a chocolate bar have? how about mince beef and chicken breasts? Is pork or organic pork more sustainable? Me neither.
Knowing the environmental impact of every product is impossible for a single person to do, that’s where a carbon emissions label comes in.
Carbon Emission Labels
Carbon Emission labels have been attempted by different countries over the years and have failed mainly due to the lack of manufacturers and producers in adopting them.
Good carbon labels need to use simple measurements, we don’t have time to analyse 20 different emission-related points to make a judgement, colour and simple measurements makes it easy to compare and decide (Upham 2011).
Carbon footprint or similar food labels let people make informed choices about what products and industries they support. Over time people move more progressively towards sustainable products providing an incentive for industry and producers to be more sustainable themselves.
The sooner we implement a carbon emissions food labelling policy the sooner we can make our own food choices about the environment.
Referencing
- Camilleri A, Larrick R and Hossain S et al. (2018) Consumers underestimate the emissions associated with food but are aided by labels. Nature Climate Change, 9(1), 53–58.
- Thøgersen J and Nielsen K (2016) A better carbon footprint label. Journal of Cleaner Production, 125, 86–94.
- Upham P, Dendler L and Bleda M (2011) Carbon labelling of grocery products: public perceptions and potential emissions reductions. Journal of Cleaner Production 19(4): 348–355. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.05.014.
