Here is an interesting artical that I think may relate to a Sikh shopper.
Stuck on you
Organic or fairtrade? Sustainable or certified? With so many labels on food, clothes and white goods, it’s a miracle that we make it to the checkout before closing time. So just how useful are ethical labels to the average shopper – and which ones live up to their eco credentials? Lucy Siegle investigates
Sunday January 13, 2008
The Observer
I’ve always liked the idea of the ‘mystery shopper’, covertly checking that everything is where it should be on the shelves of retail spaces and that staff are working to optimum levels of helpfulness. I doubt, however, I’m subtle enough to be one myself. With that in mind I commandeer Lorna, a near neighbour, to be an eco mystery shopper, tagging on to her weekly shop so that I can get a better idea of how a shopper navigates the growing jungle of eco-labels that dominates today’s consumer experience.
Lorna, who, by her own admission, ‘could do a lot more to shop in a green way,’ gamefully agrees, although she warns, ‘I have two teenagers and a full-time job, so my shopping trips are really a bit of a trolley dash. I suppose I look for the organic labels on meat and vegetables, if I see them, and I do fairtrade on coffee. But I don’t know much about the rest.’ But then, the fairtrade mark, doled out by the Fairtrade foundation is the envy of every other green label for the simple reason that consumers recognise it. A 2005 Mori survey found that 50 per cent of the UK adult population can now identify the mark.
The concept of eco-labelling is reasonably simple: the logos and badges on consumer goods are (usually) voluntary marks awarded to producers who can show that their product is less harmful to the environment than similar products. What isn’t straightforward are all the subsets, ostensibly covered by EU guidelines, imaginatively entitled Type I, II and III.
Predictably, these vary in robustness. Type I labels are based on criteria selected by an independent third party. Type II are based on self-declarations by a manufacturer who might proclaim a product, say, ‘climate friendly’ or ‘recycled’. And finally type III, considered by the majority of environmental analysts to be the most credible, use quantitative life-cycle assessments of a product or service (which means right the way through its production and use cycle) and are verified by a third party.
Unsurprisingly it is the rise of the ‘private’ type II label that irks environmentalists most. ‘A lot of labels, especially the EU Eco Label, are a bit like on/off switches,’ explains Dr Brenda Boardman from the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. ‘You can only turn on your eco credentials if you pay the right amount of money.’ This may explain why the EU Eco Label, represented by a daisy symbol, seems to have wilted in popularity in recent times. ‘I much prefer mandatory labelling, such as the Energy Labels now legally required on white goods,’ Boardman continues. ‘It is so easy as a consumer to save energy by following the label on a washing machine. And they can be certain that it’s always good to move up a band. It’s just as good to move G to F as it is B to A.’
Label design is important. ‘It is best to look like it’s not loved by a designer,’ New York- based design expert Rob Giampietro told Business Week recently. ‘Think of the unglamorous cigarette-box warning. A label can be beautiful in its blunt communicativeness. If an eco-label or logo looks institutional, it can help a shopper realise it’s not purely marketing. The more ugly and compliant it is, the more shoppers will see it as external.’
All of which is fine as long as the ’shopper’ hasn’t been put off by a surfeit of competing labels. ‘I do believe labels are a major tool for consumers,’ says Burcu Turner, a research leader from the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. ‘But which eco-label is the most credible? That’s a pretty difficult question when you’re faced by a jungle of different logos.’ Turner has researched 107 eco-labelled food quality schemes, and says, ‘I’m afraid I concluded that in this jungle of schemes, for the average EU citizen, it would be very difficult to make the right choice for the safest, healthiest and most environmentally friendly food.’
Back in aisle three, Lorna and I are doing very good impressions of said average EU citizen. We have amassed a pile of food and non-food products, including loose fruit and vegetables covered by one of the UK’s 10 main organic standards alongside the more obscure (and exotic) eco-labels applying to cat litter (the EU eco standard), a bottle of wine where the badge relates to the cork (Forestry Stewardship Certified cork oak bark from Portugal) and coffee filters wearing a Nordic Swan and four different types of ’sustainable’ or ‘certified’ notebooks.
A few are downright misleading: we chance upon a hair product that claims with a small cloud logo to be ‘CFC neutral’. Given that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have been banned under the Montreal Protocol since 1993, this particular label is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. We are surrounded by products with ticks, smiley faces, rabbits, green trees, European stars, grinning dolphins, shade-grown agricultural commodities and numbers in triangles to denote recycling/upcycling/downcylcing potential. ‘It will soon be impossible to buy anything without a green label,’ says Lorna.
Her comments are more prescient than she knows. As the big retailers try and match up to the sustainable gauntlet thrown down by M&S’s sustainable blueprint, Plan A (subtitle: because there is no Plan B), the initiatives (and labels) are coming thick and fast. From May, we will be able to buy Sainsbury’s fishfingers containing sustainable palm oil (one in 10 products in the average supermarket basket contains palm oil of uncertain provenance, charged with killing off the Sumatran habitat of the orang-utan), followed by sustainable palm-oil soap in July. The best way of communicating this innovation? No doubt through a sustainable palm-oil label (perhaps an orag-utan swinging happily from a tree?)
But nothing could compete with the prospect of carbon labels, which added to traffic lights, sugar and salt and nutritional labels promise that a future readymeal will wear more badges than the keenest boy scout. Last year, Terry Leahy, the recently knighted Tesco supremo, announced that the giant supermarket chain would carbon label all of its products, some 70,000 different lines. That this is more easily said than done is an epic understatement when you consider that it took the Carbon Trust a good three years to complete carbon footprints on just three products: an Innocent smoothie, a Botanics shampoo for Boots, and Walkers crisps. Luckily, Leahy thought better of his initial vision (fortunately he had not specified a deadline) and the Carbon Trust is now working on just 30 products: the amount of embodied carbon in potatoes, tomatoes, light bulbs, detergents and orange juice are all being assessed as we speak.
Currently only Walkers crisps wear a carbon eco label – an arrow on the corner of the packet reveals there are 75g of carbon in a packet of cheese and onion-flavoured crisps. But what does this mean? ‘I have no idea about that,’ says Lorna in Tescos, and neither does the lady at the checkout – ‘I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, love,’ she admits.
Economic psychologist John Thogersen thinks some labels should be simplified: ‘Eco-labelling can be a very useful way of communicating eco virtues of products to consumers,’ he says, ‘but the balance of information is critical. If goods are bought repetitively (some 70 per cent of our supermarket purchases are repeat purchases) then they are bought with small risks to the consumer, so they’re not going to waste hours processing and deciphering a lot of complex labels. For big purchasing decisions (with higher personal cost) such as washing machines it can be reasonably assumed that consumers are willing to translate more complex information.’
He also points out that ‘good’ labels can be very effective indeed. In a United Nations report from 1995 (analysis of the actual effects of eco labels remains rare and difficult) the Blue Angel (a longstanding German label) was reckoned to have reduced emissions of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides from oil and gas heating appliances by more than 30 per cent and credited with reducing the amount of solvents emitted from paints and varnishes into the environment by some 40,000 tonnes. Meanwhile, in Sweden the Good Environmental Choice and Nordic Swan labels are believed to be responsible for big reductions in chlorinated compounds, acids and other pollutants from the Swedish forest industry, not to mention toxic household chemical emissions – particularly laundry detergents.
‘Labelling can’t do everything by itself, however,’ warns Burcu Turner, who leads eco-labelling projects at the Wuppertal Institute, ‘because it fails to address our consumption patterns. So we might buy energy-efficient mobile phones with an eco-label (Munich-based company Kandy Mobile AG was the first to introduce such a phenomenon in September last year), but if we own more than one, the efficiency cancels out.’ The moral of the story is that in order to be effective, eco-labels need to grapple with that thorny old eco issue: consumer behaviour.
Turner also thinks some products have no business wearing labels at all: ‘Eco-labelled cars (where all environmental aspects and phases along the entire manufacturing chain would be considered), or even fair trade car parts might be a great idea, in that they could provide lots of benefits. But think about how the greenhouse gas emissions of cars are rising because of increasing sales, and it’s obvious that an eco label would face rebound effects.’ This has long been a contention on planet eco. When the German label, the Blue Angel, was once proposed for an electric lawnmower, eco warriors strongly objected; the only truly eco grass-cutting implement, they argued, was the scythe. Despite this, the lawnmower eventually won its badge.
The perfect label may not yet exist. ‘Eco labelling was the first wave,’ says Gilles Grolleau, Associate Professor at Montpellier’s international agricultural college. ‘But now I think we’re about to see new dimensions where more broadly ethical ideas like cruelty-free and fair trade will take on more importance, as well as the “green” environmental aspects.’ This assertion is backed up by the fact that the United Nation’s Environment Programme is now researching the development of eco labels in developing nations, which have traditionally been excluded from these projects. ‘At some point,’ says Grolleau, ‘you’d hope that these values would apply to all products and services. They (Fairtrade, non-toxic or low-energy) would be the norm, not the exception; a license to do business.’ In which case the eco label, green tick and smiley dolphin would presumably become obsolete.
LABELS MAKING THEIR MARK
THE SOIL ASSOCIATION The Rolls-Royce of eco-labels, founded in 1946. Its standards of organic production go well above the Defra minimum (used as a maximum by other organic standards) ensuring the integrity of organic production. Standards do not permit the routine use of agrichemicals or pesticides and specify rotational grazing systems. It also has higher animal welfare specifications than standard organic systems. By 2009 all air-freighted produce must conform to these standards to retain the Soil Association logo. soilassociation.org
VEGAN SOCIETY permits no animal ingredients and, where applicable, the ingredients must not involve any animal product, by-product or derivative. No animal testing is permitted in manufacture; ‘the Society understands the word “animal” to refer to the entire Animal Kingdom, that is all vertebrates and all multicellular invertebrates’. Neither will the Society certify products containing genetically modified organisms where their development has involved animal genes or animal-derived substances. vegansociety.com
THE FAIRTRADE MARK An independent consumer label giving an independent guarantee that disadvantaged producers in the developing world are getting a better deal. Products bearing the mark meet international Fairtrade standards, set by the international certification body Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO). Supplying producers are inspected and certified by the FLO and receive a minimum price covering the cost of sustainable production and an extra premium for social or economic development. fairtrade.org.uk
THE LEAF MARQUE guarantees that the producer operates their business and production in accordance with Leaf Integrated Farm Management principles: farmers manage all key farm inputs including water and fuels in a responsible manner to ensure that they have least impact on the environment, including the proper recycling of by-products. Pesticides are permitted (unlike the organic system) but farmers must follow a responsible use code. In addition, Leaf farmers have a positive approach to improve wildlife and the landscape. leafuk.org
MSC TICK ensures that the fish you are buying comes from a well-managed and sustainable fishery, as defined by the Marine Stewardship Council, a global, non-profit organisation set up by Unilever, the world’s largest buyer of seafood, and WWF, in 1997. In 1999 the MSC become fully independent from both organisations. Now 24 of the world’s fisheries are certified, and 42 are being assessed. Independent certifiers assess fisheries against three principles: sustainability of stock, ecosystem impact and effective management. msc.org
OEKO-TEX 100 Fabric with the Oeko-Tex 100 label has been tested for pH-value, formaldehyde content, pesticides, heavy metals, chlorinated organic carriers and preservatives. The label also ensures that clothes are free of flame-retardant and biocide finishes, prohibited in the apparel industry. You’ll find it on British products ranging from Disney Loved by Nature – a natural colour cotton range for children, wool floor coverings from the Alternative Flooring Company, and ethical fashion labels such as Noir and Ciel. oeko-tex.com
THE HUMANE COSMETICS STANDARD aka the Leaping Bunny Cruelty Free/Against Animal Testing Accreditation is awarded by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV). It ensures that companies no longer conduct or commission animal testing for its cosmetics and toiletries products or household products. When a company signs up they open up their supply chain to an independent audit and guarantee not only that they don’t test but that the products are not tested along the supply chain. gocrueltyfree.org
MBDC CRADLE TO CRADLE PRODUCT CERTIFICATION This label tells you that products have been made in accordance with chemist Michael Braungart and sustainability design guru William McDonough’s ‘cradle to cradle’ philosophy. Instead of designing cradle-to-grave products, dumped in landfills at the end of their life, MBDC products are designed around cradle-to-cradle cycles, whose materials are perpetually re-used. Time magazine called the concept ‘a unified philosophy that is changing the design of the world’. mbdc.com
THE RUGMARK ensures that your rug wasn’t made courtesy of child labour and that the adults who made it were paid a ‘fair wage’. Carpet manufacturers sign a legally binding contract to produce carpets without illegal child labour; register all looms with the RugMark Foundation; and allow access for unannounced inspections. Looms are monitored regularly. Inspectors are trained and supervised. The label also verifies that a portion of the carpet price is contributed to the rehabilitation and education of former child weavers. rugmark.org.uk
THE EUROPEAN UNION EU ENERGY LABEL If you buy an A-grade freezer, washing machine, dishwasher, washer dryer, dishwasher or even light bulb, you can rest assured that you’ve picked the most energy efficient model available; the exception is for domestic fridges that now have a A++ rating. Conversely, if you buy a white good with a G rating, you’ve bought the least efficient. As an EU ‘compulsory ratings notice’, energy-rating labels must be shown on all white goods – even on the internet. If it’s missing, ask the retailer why.
THE ENERGY SAVING TRUST LOGO tells you that a product has been selected by an independent panel because it meets strict criteria on energy efficiency. Usually awarded to consumer white goods that are more efficient than the EU mandatory A rating (such as a washing machine with an AAA grade). Also endorses products in categories where there is no statutory EU energy label. You can find it on super-efficient products such as boilers, TVs with integrated digital decoders (IDTVs) and most recently the Eco kettle. est.org.uk
THE FSC TRADEMARK ensures that the timber product or product derived from timber (eg some Tetrapak food cartons and even the first Bible to be published on FSC paper) is from a sustainably managed forest as defined by the Forest Stewardship Council’s 10 governing principles; number three covers the protection of the rights of indigenous communities and six states that the FSC prohibits the conversion of forests and other natural habitats. The FSC’s are the only internationally valid standards for responsible forest management. fsc.org
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