[image from Douglas Marett]
16 April 2022
One day before Easter Sunday, and the popular Easter lunches by families accross Denmark, the Danish Government announced the decision to proceed with creating a new sustainability label that shows the GHG emissions of individual food products.
In his LinkedIn post announcing the decision the Minister for Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries, Rasmus Prehn, indicated that “Denmark, as the first country in the world, will now have a government regulated certification for the climate that shall make it easier for us to make the greener choice. The certification shall be simple and easy to understand during a busy trip to the supermarket, and as much as possible be based on the individual food product’s climate impact through its value chain, in the broadest since”. [1] What is available to consumers right now?
There are already many great science backed sources that provide the a general estimate of the GHG emissions of food types, such as the tCO2e emissions per kg of chicken versus beef. These are mostly approximated numbers since they are based on the life cycle analysis of a few products in a category of food. This means that actual GHG emissions from that specific chicken leg you are eating can be quite different, because of where and how each chicken leg is produced and delivered to your supermarket.
The Danish Salling Group piloted a private climate label with the general estimates of the GHG emissions for food types in its Netto supermarket chain in 2021, for selected food groups. [2] The values of the labels were based on the Large Climate Database prepared by CONCITO [3] This has been a long time comming
The climate certification in Denmark has been a long time coming, as well as the debate around it in a political, technical, and practical sense. The last large open discussion for this topic was held in November 2021 and organised by GS1 Denmark. Though there was common consensus on the need and applicability of a climate certification for food products, there was a good bit of debate on the best means to deliver this to the public. Especially since not every tomato is equal when it comes to the GHG emissions results of a tomato producers life cycle analysis. [4] Shortly after the above debate the Danish Consumer Ombudsman issued a green claims guidance for marketing practices in Denmark, which specifically highlights the requirements for an official certified label to show environmental benefits. Failing which a life cycle analysis shall be done, with and expert opinion, to prove that the claimed environmental impact of an individual product is better than what is common in the market at that time. [5] A big step for Denmark, but what is next?
This new announcement by Minister Prehn seems to be leading towards a combined approach that hopes to address both the technical issues of per product GHG emissions, but also the regulation around green claims in Denmark. This will certainly be a first and big step for Denmark and the world, but as Paul Holmbeck points out in an opinion piece in Altinget, just informing consumers of climate impacts may not be enough for systemic change. “Consumer choice is also governed by the price that is highly visible on the product. Therefore, labelling must be accompanied by CO2 taxes, which means that the price of food reflects the climate impact”. [6] Following this idea we can only hope that lessons can be learned from the 2011 Danish tax on products with high in sugar and saturated fats, that was repealed one year later for political reasons. Even though it was later determined that the tax had actually led to a statically significant change in consumer behaviour. [7]
About the author
Douglas Marett has spent close to two decades addressing sustainability and climate change actions for governments and companies at a global scale, and is the CEO of GH Sustainability and Managing Director at enablesus.
References:
[1] Rasmus Prehn (2022) “Danmark skal have verdens første klimamærke på mad” Post on LinkedIn, 15th April 2022.
[2] Salling Group (2021) “Netto lancerer Danmarks første klimamærkning og tester kundernes lyst til at handle mere klimavenligt” Press Release, 2021.
[3] The Big Climate Database (2022) developed by CONCITO.
[4] Douglas Marett (2021) “Envisioned climate labels for products are not addressing the full solution” Article on We Don’t Have Time, 24th November 2021.
[5] Danish Consumer Ombudsman (2021) “Quick guide to environmental claims” Danish Government, December 2021.
[6] Paul Holmbeck (2022) “Fem forhold er afgørende, hvis klimamærke skal batte” Article on Altinget, 21st February 2022.
[7] Vallgårda, et al. (2015) “The Danish tax on saturated fat: why it did not survive”. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 69, pages223–226 (2015).
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106 w
very great news
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107 w
That's great news! But I guess nudging is not good enough and implementing CO2 tax will be needed to have a real impact
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107 w
I agree that a carbon tax does have a good potential to strengthen impact along with the certification, but to make sure that it is politically viable the government will need to transparently account for the funds, and direct it all to supporting Initiatives for the sector... e.g. the cost of the LCAs and certification, and supporting national food producers in their own GHG mitigation actions which need investment.
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107 w
Great news, Denmark leading the way again...