To paraphrase Kermit: It isn’t easy being red, white, and blue. Arriving in London this past week was something of a shock to the system, a jolt of reality that was both delightful and disarming. The town seems to have gone carbon crazy, offering up a display of initiatives from both the public and private sectors that highlighted how far behind the U.S. has fallen. The consciousness about carbon here seems to be sky-high. Within minutes of deplaning at Heathrow on Wednesday, I was greeted by this intriguing headline: “GREEN LABELS FOR SHOPPERS.” Suffice to say, as someone who’s been tracking green consumer and labeling issues for nearly two decades, it caught my eye. The story, in the Evening Standard, turned out to be more than typical British tabloid hyperbole: Everything we buy could have “carbon footprint” labels to tell us how green the product is under a government plan unveiled today. Just as food carries warnings on salt, sugar, and fat, the new labels would carry a sign or figure to alert shoppers to the CO2 emissions used. The label could be based on a “traffic light” system that would show red for highly wasteful products and green for… (more)
(Posted by Joel Makower in Climate Change at 8:15 AM)