From Cash to Carbon

After spending many years using costing methodologies to calculate the profitability of products and customers in numerous industries, it's a welcome change to have the opportunity to work with organizations that are adopting the same activity-based methodologies to calculate the carbon emitted across the life cycle of products and services. 

Although there is no legislation yet, there are a number of initiatives across the globe that are driving food and beverage manufacturers and some service providers to start 'eco-labeling' as it's called. This is throwing up some interesting results that will hopefully encourage us to change our behaviour and do our bit to save the planet. 

For instance the Paris Metro now publishes the amount of carbon emitted by each journey on the ticket and compares it with the equivalent journey by car. As the attached image of a ticket shows, a 23 minute by Metro results in 15g of carbon compared with 815g for the same journey in a car. So unless you can get fifty or so people in the car, it's better to take to the tube - or perhaps cycle. (PS I accept no responsibility for any fatalities that may result from cycling in Paris).

Some of the initial calculations done by some food manufacturers are also throwing up some stunning results as well - with the production, supply and consumption of a drink or food often emitting many times its own weight in carbon.

But unlike cost and profitability reporting where the expenses fed into a model can always be reconciled with the assigned costs, carbon labeling is not yet a precise science. This will undoubtedly result in manufacturers of almost identical products coming with with varying results depending on how they have defined the boundaries of their life-cycle assessment and the carbon coefficients used in the calculation. 

Some writers have suggested that this may discredit eco-labeling and confuse consumers. But for me the real issue is not whether comparable products from two different manufacturers show broadly similar amounts of carbon, but a benchmark figure for the amount of carbon emitted by a far more eco-friendly alternative is also shown just as in the Metro ticket above. Only then will consumers have the information they need to make truly informed decisions.