Opportunities and Challenges of Carbon Footprint,Climate or CO2 Labelling for Horticultural Products

The number of fruits on the German and European markets with a carbon label is on the increase. This contribution reviews the existing carbon labels by evaluating, categorising and giving background information to provide guidance for labelling home-grown horticultural produce. The existing labels worldwide were classified in 10 categories: (1) CO₂ value; (2) Colour code (with or without CO₂ value); (3) CO₂ reduction (Carbon Trust, Tesco’s, UK) or conversion labels; (4) Climatop for Migros, Switzerland (temporal label for the best product within a product category, e.g., banana, rice, salt); (5) Airfreight labels, e.g., Marks & Spencer’s UK (without further information); (6) ‘Climate, carbon offset or CO₂-neutral’, e.g., NewTree, (only when using gold standard CO₂ emission certificates); (7) unaccounted CO₂ compensation measures (such as planting young trees: ‘CO₂ pineapple’ in Costa Rica); (8) Sustainability labels (ProPlanet, REWE), (9) sustainability reports (printed or online) and (10) QR-Code on the shelf or product to access web-based information. The ‘Pros and Cons’ of the climate labels are compared with respect to the seasonal fruit and vegetables often sold on the markets as lose items and the stakeholder interest. Labelling approaches 4, 8, 9 and 10 appeared suitable for seasonal fruits and vegetables based on criteria such as transparency, clarity, objectivity and integration in the sustainability context. Overall, it is difficult to use labels with a CO₂ value for horticultural products, because (a) the consumer may find it difficult to judge and memorise numeric values, particularly if expressed on different units (e.g. packet size, 1 l, 100 g) and (b) because of the big variation between the farm production systems and the variability between the year to year weather and (c) the consumer may find shopping with a seasonal crop calendar and country of origin label a better choice.