The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is working on a system to label the carbon footprints of consumer products as part of an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, EPA Deputy Minister Chiu Wen-yen (邱文彥) said yesterday.
Chiu said the planned labeling system would first be applied to products such as PET-bottled beverages, cookies, candies and CDs on a trial basis.
He announced the plan at an international forum on “carbon footprints,” a system used to measure the “total greenhouse gas emissions caused by an organization, event or product,” the UK-based Carbon Trust said.
Carbon Trust is a non-profit company tasked with accelerating the move to a low-carbon economy.
Chiu said that the carbon footprint labeling system would be accompanied by a set of carbon footprint calculation criteria targeting Taiwanese products, a set of measures to assist local manufacturers in checking the carbon footprints of their products and applying for carbon labels, a carbon label certification system and strategies to promote products with carbon labels.
The implementation of a carbon labeling system will have a “profound impact” on Taiwan because it is an export-dependent country, Chiu said.
There will be increasing demand for carbon labeling on commodities amid a rising global trend for greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and if Taiwan cannot meet the demand, it could lose many trade opportunities, Chiu said.
Taking the world's largest chain retailer — Walmart — as an example, Chiu said the company had begun asking its suppliers to provide information on the life cycles of their products since last July and would print the information on the price label to tell consumers how much greenhouse gas was emitted during production.
The move is expected to affect 100,000 Walmart suppliers, he said.
Meanwhile, British chain retailer Tesco has been marking carbon emission volumes on some of it products since the spring of 2008.
Attending the two-day forum — titled “Following Carbon Footprints: A New Road to Carbon Reduction” — were Robin Dickinson, development and project manager at the Carbon Trust; Atsushi Inaba, chairman of Japan's Committee for International Standardization of the Carbon Footprint System; Laura Drauker, senior researcher at World Resources Institute; and Gyusoo Joe, the carbon management team manager at the Korea Environmental Industry and Technology Institute.
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