In an effort to encourage its citizens to purchase “greener” food products, Sweden has announced that it allow companies to tack labels onto vegetables, dairy, and fish products if the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the foods have been reduced by at least 25 percent. For example, if a milk producer uses manure instead of chemical-based fertilizers, he’ll receive a “climate-certified” tag to put on his milk.
Unfortunately, while the intentions may be good here, the reality is a bit more complex. Simply slapping a label on something based on a single factor does not mean it is green. New Scientists reports:
“The only thing we’re guaranteeing is that improvements have been made,” says Anna Richert, an adviser to the Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF), and head of the team developing the criteria for labeling products. “This could mean reductions in emissions of anything from 5 to 80 per cent.”
Danielle Nierenberg of Worldwatch Institute, a Washington DC based think tank, says that there is still a shortage of firm figures for emissions produced when growing, processing, shipping, and selling most foods. “Because we don’t have a lot of good scientific data, I think there’s a risk that companies will claim things they can’t back up, and greenwash products that might not be climate friendly,” she says.
Putting labels on green foods might up their sale, but with no scientific way of calculating if a product is climate friendly, these labels will just add noise to the already-crowded label system we have for foods. Remember when consumers ran for anything labeled “fat free”?
(more…)
Forget your Jetsons-like vision of an automated high-rise city with flying cars and robot maids: The future city will need to be sustainable and, consequently, a little dull. Last night at the World Science Fair, panelists took turns talking about their visions for future cities—where, it is projected, fifty percent of the population will live in just a few decades—as pastoral areas of towering efficiency and greenness. If you thought green was not sexy, and sustainable living meant little more than energy conservation (installing lots of insulation) and sacrifice (using fans instead of air conditioning), you wouldn’t be wrong. But sustainable solutions through radical design (taken from the title of this lecture) are not all short showers and insulated attics.
