Going Green – Carbon Labeling

What’s common among these: Brad Pitt, Paris Hilton, and Going Green? Depending upon your measuring scale, all are hot. I mean, they are in vogue. You can go light green, even lightest shade of it, and you?ll still be hot. You will be a fashion icon. A very natural and intelligent mind like mine would then ask, “what if Paris Hilton and Brad Pitt together throw a green party?” Then the only correct answer would be, “That?s too hot.” Now, how do they throw a green party? By offering food items that have “low carbon labels”.

What’s that? Carbon labeling is a means to give consumers an idea of how much impact that product is making on environment. Higher values mean higher impact (and that is bad). Tropicana just announced to start labeling its juices. Cadbury-Schweppes, and Tesco, have begun introducing “carbon labeling” on products. So have many others. Soon you and I will be labeled too. What? No, sorry, there is no choice. This is for environment.

How do carbon emissions arise in food production? We know some of it already from press. Keeping the raw materials or the end product in freezer requires “AC” – and that generates a lot of green house gas. Then, manufacturers use various other material and processes that require chemical processing producing green house effects. On the farm nitrogen and methane are present in the process – they are much more potent in terms of the effect they have. Transporting and storage are other obvious sources of detrimental green house elements.

Even if the consumers would not understand much initially, do you think at least some awareness will be created among mass? Or, will it just be like prevalent calorie values on food items? Some take it seriously for some days because of advice from some one – only to say, “Screw it, I am gonna drink that.” How about those profit making manufactures and marketers? Will they understand that marketing high carbon label items is causing damage to environment and they should restrict their profit making schemes somewhat? Maybe, it will.

Research suggests that the two high impact food items are meat and dairy. Now, what are we gonna do with those popular “Got Milk” ads? Should we change those to, “Got Carbon?” From the days of yore, meat and dairy items are prime sources of nutrients for some of us – go get a different source of food. Welcome back Neanderthals! Go veggies! Oh, dairy is veggie. Oops.

Here is a business idea – “Low Carbon Life Stylist”. The expert would come on a channel like CNBC and give you paid advice on how to reduce carbon impact from your life style and how you can manage it to your carbon budget. Hold that, excuse my expression, brain fart? I know there is a huge similarity between the experts I just described and those who actually come on CNBC with financial knowledge. I would like to know how their portfolios have performed over last few months.

If food items are air lifted to Hawaii then will they have a higher carbon label number? Will orange juice produced using California oranges carry lower number in Santa Barbara than one in New York because of extra storage and transportation? So those who eat a lot more than normal recommendations have been destroying environment more? Good questions, but a hungry person would eat just about anything.
Changing consumer behavior is not easy and that to at such a basic level of life-style. But I totally agree with the idea of increasing awareness. Environment is important. Also, with similar awareness efforts, manufactures would attempt to invest to reduce their carbon footprint.

“I’ll have light green drink, dark green double Cheeseburger, and regular fries. Did I say regular? Sorry, make that green fries.”