The Standard

About the Standard

Carbonlabels.org’s carbon label standard will be a publicly-available and publicly-influenced standard for evaluating, verifying and communicating the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of food products. It is currently in the primary stages of development. While a sketch of the outline is available below, the first complete draft of the carbon label standard will not be available until late 2008.

The standard is based on the draft methodologies published by the Carbon Trust, a private company established in 2001 by the UK government “to accelerate the UK’s move to a low carbon economy.” In addition, the British Standards Institution’s draft PAS 2050 has been used to guide development of the CLS. Under sponsorship from Carbon Trust and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the British Standards Institution has completed a draft edition of the Publicly Available Specification (PAS 2050) for performing life cycle greenhouse gas analysis of goods and services. International Organization for Standardization documents on performing environmental life cycle analyses (ISO 14040, 14044, 14064, 1025) are integral to the PAS 2050.

Carbon labeling methods that abide by the carbonlabels.org standard are currently being evaluated through pilot projects with several clients in the organic and natural foods industry

The standard will be a publicly-available, publicly-influenced “living” document. It will be discussed and debated transparently through the carbonlabels.org website and in meetings of an advisory committee composed of experts in industry, academia and environmental NGOs. Updates to the standard based integrating stakeholder feedback and the latest changes in science and greenhouse gas quantification methods will occur regularly.

At this stage, the carbonlabels.org standard is articulated through four simple principles :

1. Principle I: Measure the actual product.
   Example Requirements:

   1. Include ingredients, with bias for including known high-emissions ingredients, which make up at least 90% of the total product mass.  Use a preliminary analysis evaluate whether these ingredients will make up at least 90% of the product’s total emissions.
   2. Use the source locations, farming practices, processing methods, etc. of the ingredients that will be present in the package bearing the carbon label.  Newer, less precise data is preferable to older but more precise data when farming practices or processing have changed in a way that will materially affect the product’s greenhouse gas footprint.
   3.  Appropriate emissions system boundaries should be used, beginning when raw materials are first extracted and ending when they become raw materials once again or when they are no longer producing emissions.
   4. Exclude emissions sources that the producer has no ability to control, such as emissions from energy use in food preparation
   5. For each ingredient analyzed, include all emissions sources and sinks that cannot be reasonably considered immaterial.  Include emissions sinks (biomass, soils, etc.) only when they are an integral piece of the product’s supply chain.  Do not include any offsets that take place outside of the supply chain.
   6. Include life cycle emissions, from raw material extraction to emissions after disposal, for any product packaging or interim materials that are not reused.
      
      
2. Principle II: Use fair data.
   Example Requirements:
   
   
   1. Ensure the use of the best available data on the emissions source being considered by following the data source hierarchy:
      1. Direct observation by quantification services provider or food producer
      2. Industry data gathered from a site or process closely related to the site or process being quantified
      3. Regional or national data gathered through direct observation, review of relevant secondary sources and/or quantitative models developed for the region or country (e.g. DAYCENT model results).  This level of detail would be considered Tier 2 or 3 of IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.
      4. Most recent IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Tier 1 Methodology
      5. Secondary (academic and government publications) sources of highest relevance to the emissions source being considered
   2. Maintain consistency in the use of data sources so that identical emissions sources always receive identical emissions factors
   3. Use the most recent IPCC figures on greenhouse gas global warming potential over the 100 year time horizon when converting nonCO2 greenhouse gases
      
      
3. Principle 3. Perform accurate calculations.
   Example Requirements:
   
   
   1.  Adjust for mass changes in the product ingredients as they move through the supply chain.  For example, when an ingredient is dried at a downstream stage, upstream emissions are amplified in terms of emissions per kilogram of finished product.
   2. When multiple ingredients are produced from a single process, allocate emissions according to the ratio of the price of the ingredient of interest to the total price of all the items output from the process.
      
      
4. Principle 4. Verify your results.
   Example Requirements:
   
   
   1. Involve an unbiased third party that can audit the data and calculations used to arrive at the carbon label result.