It’s Getting Hot In Here

Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, has announced a plan to put ‘carbon labels‘ on four categories of its own-brand products: orange juice, potatoes, laundry detergent, and light bulbs.  The labels, which were developed with the Carbon Trust’s carbon labelling program, show the number of grams of carbon which the product is responsible for during production, packaging, distribution, and disposal.

Tesco CEO Terry Leahy has likened the new carbon labelling scheme to a ‘revolution in green consumption’ with the intention of bringing together eco-consciousness and the mass market.  Consumers, in theory, will then be able to make choices about their products’ carbon emissions in the same way they compare calories, salt, sugar, or fat.

Yet already some consumer groups are pointing out that, without a lot of explanation, shoppers may well find themselves even more confused.  It does seem a conceptual leap between salt, which is consumed directly, and grams of carbon dioxide emissions.

A bigger concern is that the carbon labelling scheme might take the responsibility for carbon dioxide emission away from the producer and put it onto the consumer, thereby reducing the pressure for systematic carbon dioxide reductions in the production process.  It certainly does seem to be a canny way to directly assess Tesco consumers’ concern about climate change.

A dubious eco-champion

Admittedly, there are some bigger questions about how much we can trust Tesco’s own green credentials.  Britain’s biggest retailer, Tesco owns and operates 3,200 supermarkets throughout the world, including Fresh and Wild in California.  It’s estimated that 1 in every 8 pounds spent at a UK retailer is spent in Tesco, and that the company owns more UK real estate than the Queen.

As pointed out by the Guardian, Tesco has been weathering the current credit crunch and downturn in spending by increasing the number of bargains in its stores, including ever-multiplying ‘2 for 1′ deals and goods priced at £1 or less.  Tesco, as much or more than other UK retailers (including the Wal-Mart owned Asda) encourages the overconsumption which has landed rich countries into such an ecological mess, and while it may measure the grams of carbon emitted by a carton of orange juice, what I’d really like to see is how much of the company’s carbon footprint has been exported to China.

Yet, arguably, Tesco’s size makes it a greater ally rather than a greater threat.  Carbon labelling, assuming it expands to the rest of Tesco’s range and is accompanied by consumer education, could prompt a sea-change in the way shoppers think about their products.  It could also encourage the adoption of tools such as full-cost pricing which overcome some of capitalism’s ridiculous ecological shortcomings.  The trick, it seems to me, is to keep a sharp eye on programs like Tesco’s to keep them from being yet another bold example of corporate greenwashing.