November 24, 2006—The UK’s Carbon Trust has just launched a new initiative to help businesses cut carbon emissions in their supply chain and deliver low-carbon products and services to UK consumers.
In a new report, “Carbon footprints in the supply chain: the next step for business,” the Carbon Trust outlines the steps that businesses should take to identify the carbon footprint of the individual products and services they sell. By undertaking a carbon investigation of their supply chains, businesses can reportedly map out the carbon emitted at every stage of a product’s lifecycle from source to shelf, consumption and disposal.
This approach will help businesses respond to growing consumer demand by delivering genuinely low carbon products and services. Recent research published by the Carbon Trust showed that 66 percent of UK consumers want to know the carbon footprint of the products and services they buy and two thirds are more likely to buy a product with a low carbon footprint.
The Carbon Trust has worked on pilot projects in snack foods with Walkers and in print media with Trinity Mirror. These projects alone have already identified potential annual savings for the two businesses of £2.7 million and 28,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year—the equivalent carbon emissions of 5,000 households, says the organization.
In the pilot project, the supply chain audit has enabled Walkers and Trinity Mirror to:
- Build a picture of the carbon footprint of the product by measuring life-cycle emissions across the entire supply chain;
- Identify the largest emissions sources both within their own operations and across the activities of other companies up and down the supply chain; and
- Identify opportunities to reduce emissions, cut costs and create low-carbon products.
The Carbon Trust is now also working on similar projects with Boots, Cadburys Schweppes and Marks & Spencer. As a next step, the Carbon Trust is calling on other organizations to undertake a carbon audit to help them examine their own supply chains. Interested companies should visit online for a copy of the report.
The Carbon Trust is an independent company set up by the British Government that works with UK business and the public sector to cut carbon emissions and develop commercial low-carbon technologies.
