Talking About Your Products…On Your Products

From Sustainable Life Media, July 9, 2008

Taking a cue from nutrition labels, a few companies are sharing information about environmental impacts on product packaging. Since we have no government guidelines for eco-labeling (yet), companies are taking varied approaches. Timberland kicked off the trend a couple of years ago with a “nutrition label” that includes triple-bottom-line information on energy use and “community impacts.” Walker’s chips in the U.K. went with just carbon data in a simple format. And HP felt the time was right to launch a new eco-label on printers and other electronics products sharing data on energy use and recycling (full disclosure: I advised HP on this project). Much of this is self-driven, but some openness is in response to new pressures from retailers like Tesco, which has set a goal of putting carbon information on 70,000 products – but has realized recently how hard that is and started with just 20. Other companies, like French supermarket Casino, are following Tesco’s lead.