Tesco publishes over 1100 product carbon footprints

Tesco has set themselves demanding targets both to reduce carbon emissions of the products they sell by 30% by 2020, and to find ways to help customers reduce their carbon footprints by 50% by 2020. To help achieve this they have completed carbon footprint analysis of over 1,100 of their own-brand products.

Understanding the carbon footprints of these products helps Tesco to understand where greenhouse gas emissions arise, enabling them to reduce their impact on the environment. They have also used this information to carbon label over 500 products since 2008, and to provide helpful advice to their customers on how they can reduce their household carbon footprint. 

Find out more about carbon footprints of different products PDF 1MB

Update Product Environmental Footprint : French developments

Household consumption of goods and services represents a major challenge in reducing our impact on the environment, in terms of combating the greenhouse effect and moving towards a more energy and resource efficient economy. The development and display of an environmental footprint will result in the gradual availability to consumers of the information on the carbon footprint and other environmental impacts of their purchases. The dual purpose is to include an environmental component in consumer purchasing choices and to provide the entire production and distribution chain with new indicators to promote and intensify their efforts to better eco-design products.

As provided by the Grenelle II law, France is currently conducting a national experimentation on consumer product environmental information that has started on 1 July 2011 to last one year. The trial covers the quantification of environmental impacts and the communication of environmental footprints to the consumer. 230 companies applied 168 of them have been selected. All sectors are represented, with about one third from the food and beverage area. Several foreign companies – from Chile, Colombia, Sweden etc. – are part of the selection as well as French branches of multinationals.

In the meantime, since 2008, the ADEME-AFNOR stakeholder platform has been developing a general environmental footprinting methodology (BPX 30-323) and product category rules (PCRs) – twelve PCRs to date. ADEME is also constructing a public generic product life cycle database, as well as calculators. These tools aim to facilitate a general implementation.

The national experiment on consumer product environmental footprinting and communication continues until July this year. 

You can find additional information about the assessment of the national experiment on the right hand side.
http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/Product-Environmental-Footprint.html

Consommation durable : expérimentation nationale de l’affichage des caractéristiques environnementales des produits

New information on the currently ongoing French National Experiment for environmental labelling has been published, including practical approaches for communication.

More information: www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr