Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript
Sam Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I’m Sam.
Neil And I’m Neil.
Sam That’s a tasty chocolate bar you’re munching on there, Neil.
Neil Tasty but maybe not healthy.
Sam But at least on the wrapper there’s a label to tell you about its sugar, fat and calorie content.
Neil Yes, the little coloured guide on the wrapper allows consumers to compare the healthiness of different things.
Sam Well, in this programme, we’ll be looking at an idea to add a label showing the carbon footprint of a product, and talking about some vocabulary used around this subject.
Neil By carbon footprint, we mean how much carbon is used through the activities of a person, company or country. This new system sounds like a good idea, Sam.
Sam Yes – but as normal, we still have a question for you to answer first. I think we all agree we want to reduce our carbon footprint somehow – but according to the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, how many tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person annually could be reduced by living car-free? Is it…
a) Around 1 tonne,
b) Around 2 tonnes, or
c) Around 3 tonnes?
Neil I’m sure living without a car would reduce CO2, so I’ll say c) around 3 tonnes.
Sam OK, Neil, we’ll find out if that’s right at the end of the programme. But let’s talk more about carbon labelling. Listing the carbon dioxide emissions of a product on the packaging may encourage us to make greener choices.
Neil It’s not a new idea but it’s something that’s never caught on – become popular or fashionable.
Sam Until now. The idea now seems to have returned, and it’s something the BBC World Service programme The Climate Question has been looking into. They’ve been speaking to business leaders about adding labelling to their products.
Neil Such as Marc Engel, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Unilever. Let’s hear why he thinks the idea is growing in popularity…
Marc Engel, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Unilever What we are seeing is Generation Z and Millennials, are much much more willing to make choices, informed choices, about responsible products and brands, so that’s also why we’re also doing it. At the end of the day, we’re doing it because we believe that this is what consumers will ask from business - this is not something that we made up ourselves.
Sam So, in this case, it seems it’s people buying Unilever products who are driving this change – particularly younger people from Gen Z. So people born towards the end of the 20th Century or the beginning of the 21st Century, or slightly older Millennials.
Neil They want to make ‘informed choices’ about what they buy – so, making decisions based on good and accurate information. Carbon labelling is part of that information.
Sam And Marc Engel mentioned consumers wanting to buy ‘responsible’ products or brands. Here, that means ‘trusted’ or ‘reliable’ with less environmental impact.
Neil That all makes sense, and it’s why Unilever recently announced it’s committed to putting carbon footprint information on 70,000 products. The Climate Question programme also spoke to Dr Zaina Gadema-Cooke – an expert in supply chain management at Northumbria University. What does she call measuring a product’s carbon footprint?
Dr Zaina Gadema-Cooke, Northumbria University The problem with footprinting is it’s almost impossible to include the consumption stage associated with the consumer because we all deal with the products that we purchase and dispose of differently. So, it’s very difficult to include that - so ‘farm-to-fork’ calculations tend to really be ‘farm-to-retail-shelf’ calculations of carbon footprint loadings.
Sam So, Dr Zaina Gadema-Cooke describes the measurement of a product’s carbon footprint as ‘foot printing’. And this, she says, is difficult to measure because we don’t know what people do with the stuff after they have bought it.
Neil Yes, so for example a carbon label might show an estimate of the carbon footprint of milk from the cow to the consumer – what Dr Zaina Gadema-Cooke calls ‘farm to fork’ – but after it leaves the supermarket shelf, we don’t know how efficiently it is stored, how much is wasted and what happens to the packaging.
Sam It’s all food for thought – something to think seriously about.
Neil And, Sam, what did you think about my answer to your question earlier?
Sam Ah yes, I asked you - according to the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, how many tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person annually could be reduced by living car-free?
Neil And I said around 3 tonnes.
Sam Which was actually, a bit too much. Research found living car-free reduces a person’s annual CO2 production by an average of 2.04 tonnes.
Neil Anyway, let’s briefly recap some of the vocabulary we’ve mentioned today.
Sam Yes, we’ve been talking about measuring our carbon footprint - that’s how much carbon is used through the activities of a person, company or country.
Neil And footprinting is an informal way of saying measuring the carbon footprint of something.
Sam When something has caught on it means it has become popular or fashionable. And, making informed choices means making decisions based on good and accurate information.
Neil Buying something that is responsible means that it is trusted or reliable. And, the phrase from farm to fork describes the processes involved from agricultural production to consumption.
Sam We’re out of time now, but thanks for listening. Bye for now.
Neil Goodbye.