While most supermarket food packages have nutritional labels that help consumers make informed decisions about the food they buy, it’s rare to find similar information about the environmental footprint that these products carry. That, however, may soon change as an increasing number of companies are making efforts to inform consumers about the ecological impacts of the products they use.
Take Cocokind, for instance. The indie beauty brand recently introduced new packaging labels for its products which detail a list of sustainability facts about each item. For example, one specific product lists a carbon footprint of 24.50 grams per use.
To help consumers put that amount into perspective, the label compares it to other emissions sources, such as driving a car, for comparison. The label also includes details about the packaging itself — for example, for liquid products, the sprayer device inside the glass bottle isn’t recyclable. The label also has a QR code which provides more details when scanned.
Restaurant chain Panera Bread has also started labeling items with a low carbon footprint on their menu and one grocery store in Sweden even includes carbon labels on everything sold in the store.
Euan Murray is chief executive of the Sustainability Consortium, a nonprofit helping consumer goods brands improve their sustainability. He tells FastCompany, “We are seeing challenger brands like Oatly use carbon labeling as part of their brand positioning, as well as corporate titans like Unilever commit to labeling all 70,000 of its products.”
Image source: Cocokind
