The Environment

For every product that comes onto the market, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere during manufacture and transport. The trace they leave – their product carbon footprint – can be calculated. If the footprint is particularly small, this may be a competitive advantage in future.

The project and its pilots

"A clear understanding of one’s own CO2 emissions is the basic prerequisite for a sustainable climate and corporate strategy. It is only by conveying this product knowledge to consumers that you give them the ability to make climate-compatible purchase decisions," explains Matthias Kopp of WWF Germany, summarising the project’s aims. The WWF has formed a consortium with the Öko-Institut (Institute for Applied Ecology) in Freiburg, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Thema1 GmbH to calculate product carbon footprints (PCFs) for German companies. The service is designed to give businesses a better understanding of their own emissions along the value chain and the ability to optimise it and make it more climate friendly. The advantages for producers and consumers are obvious, according to the project’s initiators: As well as saving raw materials and costs, producers gain a competitive advantage in the growing market for climate-friendly products and services, while consumers are given the ability to recognise this competitive advantage for the first time.

Where do product carbon footprints lead?

Food and consumption cause around 40 per cent of the climate-related emissions of every German citizen, according to calculations by Germany’s Federal Environment Agency in 2007. This figure can be reduced if people are able to recognise climate-friendly products and services and can base their decision on this information. A uniform, standardised calculation of emissions, which is the aim of the pilot project, would be a great help, because it would mean that products could be compared. "A product carbon footprint of consumer goods not only creates the transparency that was previously missing from the market, enabling consumers to put their climate protection preferences into practice in their daily shopping decisions – it also represents an important regulatory element for the ecological modernisation of production and distribution chains in the move towards a low carbon economy," explains Dr Fritz Reusswig of the PIK. Whether there should be a PCF label has not yet been decided. Jacob Bilabel of Thema1 explains that this is not the project’s aim, since ‘green claims’ do more to confuse than enlighten. What is important, according to Bilabel, is working in an accurate, scientifically correct manner to create transparency – transparency that may one day be visible on an international label.

The path to PCF harmonisation

"To meet the aim of giving consumers a chance to make climate-conscious buying decisions for consumer goods, however, there is a real need for product carbon footprints to be calculated based on a scientific and credible method," believes Christian Hochfeld, Deputy Director of the Öko-Institut. What is particularly important, he believes, is agreeing on a standard method, because that is the only way in which companies can calculate values that are comparable with others. In Germany the starting point for this calculation is the ‘eco-balance’, which already defines the values for calculating CO2 emissions for major companies. The PCF project now intends to clarify which links of a product’s value chain need to be added to the calculation.

The British managed this in 2007. They used the criteria of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol as a basis for the PCF and developed the PAS 2050, a specification they used to calculate emissions and savings potential. More than 15 companies have now signed up to the initiative. The German project leaders are hoping for similar success, but want more: standardisation at international level.

Business owners and critics

"Climate protection can only be put into practice along free-market lines. The product carbon footprint represents an important innovation tool for companies that they can use to manage the necessary transition to the low carbon economy at operational level," believes Rasmus Prieß of Thema1. This is something the six companies that have signed up to the project are convinced of. They include the chemist chain dm, frozen foods producer Frosta, Henkel (known for its washing and cleaning products, cosmetics and toiletries), Tchibo, one of Germany’s largest retail firms, Deutsche Telekom AG and Tetra Pak, which supplies processing and packaging systems. They want to be involved in the discussion about whether the PCF of products and services can be communicated and labelled, and if so how.

The project also has its critics though, such as the Federation of German Food and Drink Industries (BVE), which declared in a press release that "The BVE is against additional labelling of products by means of a CO2 label because of the insufficient cost/benefit ratio. According to information from the UK (...) the outlay associated with inspections for CO2 labelling is valued at around EUR 70,000 per product. The industry’s small and medium-sized business in particular cannot be expected to cope with this level of expense." Jacob Bilabel cannot follow this reasoning: "A CO2 balance indicates possible measures for saving energy and is therefore a worthwhile exercise for all companies." And he adds, "I cannot see where the BVE figure comes from. Every company knows about its supply chain and most of them already have an eco-balance in place, so no additional costs would be incurred." It is only at the level of small and medium-sized businesses that he feels there is some catching up to do, and he is calling on the government to promote green accounting. How this can be achieved and on what scale – these are things that a pilot project such as this can clear up.