Tesco’s food labels to carry carbon confessions
Published Thursday, 17th April 2008
Greenbang remembers a time when Tesco, was you know, not quite as ‘good’ as it is today. By ‘good’, Greenbang means lurking at the very most budget end of the supermarket spectrum. In fact, there were songs at Greenbang’s primary school sung about the alleged provenance of the clothes of the less fortunate among her classmates that invoked the Tesco name. They may have included the line ‘they are really nifty, they only cost £2.50 ner ner ner”
Which is neither here or there. What’s here and now, however, is Tesco’s announcement that it will trial ‘carbon labels’ on its own-brand products from next month, reports The Guardian.
These carbon labels will mean customers can measure the eco-friendliness of their shopping, just like ingredients labels expose their various nutritional values. The labels will state just how much CO2 each product generates through its manufacture, usage and disposal, as well as the product’s category average. Up to 70,000 own-brand Tesco products will sport these labels, which have been created with help from the Carbon Trust. Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco’s chief exec, says The details of the scheme will soon be unveiled.
All together: “Let’s all go to Tesco’s, where we can buy carbon labelled produce…”
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These carbon labels will mean customers can measure the eco-friendliness of their shopping’
And…?
I can just see my missus flouncing out of Hereford Tesco to Gloucester Waitrose because the pack of Walker’s stoat and hemlock flavour demanded by ‘they-who-must be fed-junk-food’ might have 5g less CO2 in it than the current 75g… whatever that actually means or translates into. Versus what? And from where (who WILL have a different set of measures, trust me)? And doing the same with the 50-100 other items that she needs to get from shelf to trolley in 30 minutes of a Friday night. She’s freaked out enough that in sorting out the polyfiller-unmentionables in their tuck boxes she has actually sent their salt and vinegar levels to a point where the NHS can opt out once they hit 30.
At the mo, all I can sense is the cringing screech of a box being ticked, soon to be followed by a generous ladle of a mighty ad campaign to tell us that said box is now ticked.
Wouldn’t it be great if the guv’mint, manufacturers and retailers got together on a few more well-coordinated, high enviROI initiatives that the public could surely be encouraged to work with, but without dumping the whole sorry mess on the poor consumer to figure out and deal with (which they won’t) whilst slapping mutual backs at the next target-for-tonight enviro-confereence.