FRANCE: Casino moves first on carbon labelling

By Stuart Todd | 12 October 2007

Casino has outlined plans to introduce carbon labelling on 3,000 of its own-brand food products, a first among French supermarket chains.

"Casino has a well-established pro-active stance with regard to informing customers on the nutritional value of its products," a spokesperson told just-food today (11 October). "Extending this to encompass environmental factors is just another step in the process."

The labelling scheme will use a colour code denoting the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in manufacturing a product's packaging, the amount of packaging to be recycled and the amount of CO2 emitted in transporting the product in terms of truck kilometers.

Casino has teamed up with consultancy firm Bio Intelligence Service, which is tasked with analysing data used to calculate the carbon footprint of each product.

"This work is already underway and we expect to have 500 products analysed by the end of this year, rising to 3,000 over the course of 2008," the spokeswoman added. "As for going live with the labeling scheme, it will be introduced very gradually and probably by family of products starting some time in 2008."

Companies: Casino