An interesting article in The Wall Street Journal, Six Products, Six Carbon Footprints, highlights the next trend in green marketing, calculating and promoting the supply chain carbon footprint.
Never mind that the average consumer isn’t actually aware or at least has a pretty fuzzy grasp of what exactly a carbon footprint is, manufacturers are busily calculating away. And, they are finding some fairly interesting facts.
Leather, milk and meat from cows pack a pretty big carbon footprint: The average dairy cow produces, every year, an amount of greenhouse gas equivalent to four tons of carbon dioxide, according to U.S. government figures. Most of that comes not from carbon dioxide, in fact, but from a more-potent greenhouse gas: methane.
The recipe for a low-carbon load of laundry: Use liquid detergent instead of powder.
… a six-pack’s carbon footprint was about seven pounds. The real surprise was where the bulk of that number came from: the refrigeration of the beer at stores.
I actually found some of these things pretty interesting too, but as a marketer, I have different questions. I’m wondering if this will be the next wave in green marketing. I’m wondering if we will really be able to educate consumers that much about the manufacturing process. I’m wondering if they will care.
At this point my gut feel is that this WILL become a trend. Consumers will react to carbon footprint information. Leather will be out. Mothers will switch to soy and rice milk (even more than they currently are). Powder detergent will become passé.
Consumers may not always be able to understand the information, but a whole new industry of companies that analyze carbon footprints will burgeon and offer an opportunity for manufacturing minded ecopreneurs.
What will you do? What do you think about this latest trend?
Photo Credit: ezioman at Flickr Under Creative Commons License
So Vinyl, made from fossil fuels using fossil fuel energy is going to have a smaller carbon footprint than leather, made from cows which eat grass??? Every carbon atom in a cow comes from grass, which sucks in carbon out of the atmosphere, which regrows. A cows carbon footprint is by definition zero.
If you want sustainable carbon-neutral products eat meat, use timber, wear leather. Plant trees, harvest them and plant again. – There’s your carbon sink.
You can’t just analyse footprints, you have to compare footprints.
It’s not as simple as how much carbon, it has to take into account where that carbon came from.
Sensationalism meets sentimentalism, where’s the science?
Michael Hutton,
Tamworth NSW Australia