#Low Carbon Economy: Comments on Carbon footprinting

Team: Ildikó Heim, Laura Rubio, Luca Palma, Rodrigo Capriles

Our comments on the article: Following the footprints

• International, independent organization to manage/organize the standards

The international understanding of standards must be supported and managed by an independent international organization, which is capable of bringing worldwide criteria in one global and understandable direction.

• Set global Standards, which can also serve as a base for future law (mandatory)

Once standards are agreed globally, further implementation can be easier for countries through their laws basing it recognized worldwide principles.

• Benchmarking with successful labels (fairtrade, organic): what do they do better?

For effective implementation, looking at other labels is useful to determine the reasons for their success. This info could help carbon labels to emerge in a satisfactory way.

• Are costumers interested to know this info (better to compare to market average), do they decide based on this?

In order to know how aware and interested people are about the carbon footprint, a market research should be carried out. An educational campaign should be designed based on these results and actions should be taken for people to take carbon footprint as a decision factor when choosing their products.

• A simple understandable label

Carbon footprint labels should be immediately recognized. By using colors and easy figures, people should be able to rapidly know if the product has high or low carbon emissions. When the consumer needs to think long, attention is gone and impact is lost.

• Consumer Awareness Campaign

Based on the market research results and having a simple label, consumers can and should be made aware of the advantages of this labeling process via ads, trainings, FAQs, dialogs, social media etc. This way, companies with good carbon footprint results could enjoy competitive advantages.

• Include use-phase emission? (LCA)

Should companies include the use-phase emission (emitted by customer) into the life-cycle-assessment(LCA) even if it is not reliable? Though in many cases consumer’s behavior decide on the bigger part of a product’s carbon footprint.

• Advice to consumer for reduced carbon emission while usage

It could be better to give advice to save energy and CO2 eq. emission in the utilization of the good instead of try to assess the average consumption.

• CFSCO (Carbon Footprint Service Company)? on the examples of ESCO to assess suppliers?

High cost of evaluation; the solution could come from companies, which work like ESCOs (Energy Service Company) and give the service to assess the value chain and reduce the carbon footprint, and therefore increase the efficiency, and with this reduction they could be repaid for their work.

• Receiving a label means also a commitment to reduce CO2 in the future

The matter of labelling the value chain is not just to put a label, but the company that has undertaken this process commits itself to reduce its CO2 emission and to improve its efficiency.

Comments Off on #Low Carbon Economy: Comments on Carbon footprinting / 22 Feb 2012 por Ildiko Heim
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