Opinion: Charles Redfern
Charles Redfern offers in-depth analysis of the complexities of carbon labelling, explaining why his brand, Organico Realfoods, opted to use Planet Score to calculate the environmental footprint of its range.
When the world of business and PR gets involved in environmental claims there is a lot to be weary about. When I started out, more than 25 years ago, if as a consumer you really cared you would find one shop in 50 selling environmental products, so you could go and shop there. Now it’s the exact reverse: everyone makes a sustainability claim and everyone has a sustainability page on their website. By the same token there has been an explosion of scientific evidencing, often – and especially when involving big brands and big retailers – so layered in complexity, acronyms and highfalutin rationale that mere mortals dare not go there.
Consider in this light carbon labelling. We’re all concerned about the climate crisis, so what can we do about it? “Be aware of our own footprint” is one answer and make consumer choices accordingly. Google carbon neutral and there is a profusion of logos. Each one is basically a business i.e. with vested interest in selling you that logo. Carbon neutral on a product is problematic for three reasons.
First, it has to depend on offsetting. Offsetting is a little bit dodgy in the first place (this is what the likes of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth or Oxfam have argued – all of which, as an aside, we consulted in making our own carbon policy). Offsetting took a real tumble in January 2023 when The Guardian, and others, in a damning investigative report revealed that the most trusted ‘gold standard’ of certified offsets, provided by a company called Verra, were basically fictitious. Wow! Billions, from some of the biggest brands in the world, had been pumped into these to justify carbon neutral claims. The carbon neutral industry reacted as any industry does when a PR disaster hits: the head of Verra was replaced; a new stricter methodology would come into play; the science used by The Guardian was itself deemed faulty etcetera. Now if you look into the net zero business space it’s as if nothing happened, except there is a doubling down on the language of scientific validation. Carbon Trust, one of the most reliable companies in the net zero area, originally founded by the UK Government in 2001, quietly ditched its net zero label – but you don’t find a mea culpa explanation anywhere on their website, it’s all couched in ‘now even better’ advertising language. This is the basic learned amnesia of both the corporate and the political sector.
Second, carbon labelling is based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). LCA works out all emissions of a product from pre-sourcing to disposal – that’s called ‘cradle to grave’, but you can also account ‘cradle to gate’ which is the point to which you sell the product to another. LCA has a long history in the world of carbon accounting and an agreed international standardization. Very long and very complex story short – that I am hardly competent to scratch the surface of – it’s not straightforward and there are a number of controversies in LCA. To start with LCA is fundamentally not appropriate to a living or circular product – food or textiles. They were originally conceived for an industrial process with a far simpler framing of inputs and outputs. This conclusion was reached by the EU in 2023 in spite of the fact that it has a long background of pushing LCA in food/agriculture as a path to environmental labelling, and up till that point was one of the biggest cheerleaders of the LCA approach. LCA does not count for long term fertility impacts in spite of the oft-quoted claim that soils are so depleted that we are only 60 harvests away from no harvest. LCA does not include carbon sequestration which, again long story short, is important but is hard to quantify – but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. And different LCA reports, of which there are hundreds, seem to give different outcomes.
There is a specific and pretty massive sub-debate on the crucially important issue of meat, with ruminants (cows, sheep, goats) generally accounting for the lion’s share of global agricultural emissions – up to 80% if you count feed, farting and deforestation. Except there is a lot of controversy over the methane conversion rate into a CO2 or carbon equivalent value. Many studies use a 34 GWP equivalent value but newer research, including FAO estimates from 2022, have dropped that methane equivalence to 27.2. Even more challenging is the GWP research originating with the University of Oxford which says that although methane has a far higher warming impact than carbon, it lasts for a lot less time – only 12 years. On this basis, as long as ruminant numbers are stable you could argue there isn’t additional warming from ruminants. By the same token, halve the ruminant numbers on earth and you get a very quick climate cooling win.
The third and last problem with carbon accounting is the framing or assumptions made within the LCA system itself which is based on a simplistic modelling of market economics which says if you don’t produce XYZ somewhere and there is demand for it, it will be produced elsewhere: you therefore need to account for the substitution. This logic in effect means, as an example, that it is futile to try to de-intensify the chicken industry along the river Wye, which has been so heavily polluted, because that demand will be simply shifted to chicken production elsewhere that might create the same or even more damage. But demand is not fixed: it can change. First (and most obviously) from price change, but also from diet change. Next if we continue with Wye pollution, there is no guarantee that there won’t be extra chickens produced alongside the Mekong even if we keep as many chickens on the Wye. The supply/demand factors are basically far too convoluted for the substituting assumption.
This is the same problem with the land sparing argument which has emerged from intensive/industrial sustainability theories of agriculture where producing things as intensely as possible is supposedly better than growing organically because less land is needed and so the extra land can be kept totally wild. Of course there is literally no guarantee of that been case. In fact, in a capitalist market that land is far more likely to become a mono-cropped forest or to be used to produce even more cheap meat.
“The problem isn’t the science per se but the politics of that science.”
It's time to talk about Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) or eco-labelling/environmental labelling. PEF goes beyond climate change. There are 16 impact factors that go into a full PEF LCA, only one of which is climate change. The others include land use, water use, acidification, eutrophication and human toxicity. Strangely, biodiversity impact is not included directly – which underlines that the roots of PEF LCA methodology lie with the idea of working out impacts of industrial rather than circular processes.
Exactly the same problems outlined in the carbon LCA process occur with these other categories, and if anything, more so because they are less studied. Eutrophication, for example – which occurs mostly as a consequence of both intensive animal farming and poor soil structure from intensively planted chemical dependent mono-crop agriculture – is magically made worse under the organic scenario, basically by bad guesswork.
When you hear the claim science-based, you, (like me) might not be competent to challenge the science but you are competent to work out that science based is often challenged by something equally science-based and that the problem isn’t the science per se but the politics of that science.
In the UK eco-labelling got a big push when there was talk about a mandatory eco-labelling scheme for food products some three years ago, with that ambition now quietly parked. Two initiatives emerged out of this: the Food Data Transparency Partnership which includes Defra and NGOs, and an IGD initiative to move forward with an eco-label scheme.
The IGD is the Institute of Grocery Distribution and on the Steering Committee of the IGD’s eco-labelling proposal sit most of the big retailers, and the likes of Nestlé, Pepsico, 2 Sisters (that are in the business of mass-produced poultry) and Greencore (who, in their words, are a leading producer of convenience foods). The IGD did two year’s work, brought in consultants and academics and came up with an eco-labelling scheme which, to their ‘great surprise’, found that organic was less sustainable than intensively produced food. Put a question mark after the claim ‘science-based’. Research the consultants they used and what type of papers these consultants have produced and who they have worked for. Wonder why most the NGOs and trade bodies the IGD use in their ‘wider engagement’ slide have actually come out against the proposed scheme. Now go back to the opening line of this opinion piece!
Fortunately for the world of organic – fortunately too, I would say, for all those who preach their belief in regenerative agriculture – this dispute has already happened. The EU had an eco-labelling initiative which predates the UK initiative. The EU called out for similar scheme submissions and has been delving into the subject for a few years. Within the EU, France, which even has a Ministry for the Ecological Transition called Ademe, was first off the block. Ademe owns an LCA database called Agrybalyse – which incidentally, because the UK has no equivalent, is one of the scientific sources used by the IGD scheme as well as by a number of the consultancies that will expensively calculate your carbon footprint for you, if you’re a business, or even the several app-based PEF or carbon footprint calculators which consumers can use. In France an IGD-like scheme was launched named Eco-score, trialed but then dropped by Carrefour, LIDL and Aldi, with Carrefour stating that it did not meet consumer expectations of an eco-label.
The fight in France against the industrial interpretation of sustainability in agriculture has been led by Planet Score – and they seem to be winning. Planet Score has been in regular discussions with the authorities in both France and the EU around eco-labelling and has been instrumental in the EU’s U-turn on how LCAs should be used. Planet Score basically uses a supplemented LCA approach, with a bonus-malus system and corrections/additions where LCAs are not ideal – for example in calculating biodiversity impacts. There isn’t a yield/production or substitution assumption which creates an unwarranted bias to industrial production systems. Planet Score is also attentive to stated government policy goals on the environment (reduced pesticide and fertilizer dependency; protection of biodiversity; protection of healthy soils and water) as well as being conscious of the noxious health effects which the current food system has.
“The last thing we need is an environmental labelling system that re-enforces negative externalities.”
Here it’s important to take a step back. We live in a food system where there is massive over-consumption of meat and sugar, and of empty calories generally. Over 57% of the typical UK diet is hyper-processed and the hidden cost of food adds £1 to every £1 we spend at the till, mostly in health consequences. Global food waste is generally regarded as one third of the food we produce, or in CO2 terms almost 10% of global emissions. The last thing we need is an environmental labelling system that re-enforces all these negative externalities.
Planet Score isn’t just winning because it is more aware of the subject and basically more aware of the political arguments hidden behind science explanations. It is winning hearts and minds. Planet Score is available on over 300 brands, big and small, in 12 countries; it is supported by major retailers, including Picard, Monoprix, Auchan, Eroski, Naturalia and Bio-Coop. Amongst NGOs and consumer associations it has the support of WWF, Compassion in World Farming, Fairtrade and the French equivalent and partner of Which Consumer. In consumer research and media, it has received an excellent reception. In particular, consumers like the easy-to-understand A to E traffic light system which allows comparisons of environmental impacts, not just as an overall score but with specific key headings, namely animal rights, pesticides, biodiversity and climate. The IGD consumer research conversely showed a preference for just one score which seems counter-intuitive. You don’t, for example, have a general nutrition score – the score highlights fats, sugars and protein separately because without that separation, it’s a stab in the dark.
It’s interesting to look at the nitty gritty of what the two scoring systems produce in results. The IGD labelling would not allow you to differentiate between an intensively produced carrot or chickpea and its regenerative, LEAF or organic equivalent – which means as an environmental label there is neither incentive to do better for the brand, nor a clear indication for the consumer. In meat products the IGD label over-biases against beef, lamb and dairy and castigates the choice of pasture-fed, low density animal production in favour of the most intensively produced production system possible. Quelle surprise, as the French would say!
In all of this, there is a clear moral to the story: those making the science-based choices matter almost as much as the science itself! Founder and lead for Planet Score, Sabine Bonnot, insists that the label is for everyone: it is not an organic-plus label; it is for transitioning towards a more intelligent and respectful ecological future. And to make sure that science-based is a respected and meaningful claim the structure of Planet Score has been turned into a not-for-profit company with the IP (which could be worth a fair bit as there is a hugely complex piece of IT engineering, modelling and weighing of all these impacts) has been handed over for free to a committee made up exclusively of scientists, researchers and NGOs.
Does any of this matter now that Defra has dropped the idea of a government-backed label? There are plenty of companies out there that have already spent a huge amount with a carbon label scheme of some sort and even more who simply don’t want to have to do any more work. Some see the politics at work, but it doesn’t rile them. Others, like medieval peasants, will quietly defer to a greater but dubitable wisdom. But this does matter if you care about sustainability. It does matter that organic would be redefined as some sort of backwater agriculture system for cranks and weirdoes – which is exactly what the large gang of scientists employed by the GM and aggrotech industry, by the Bayers, Monsantos and Cargills of the world have been saying and lobbying for all along.
There seems to be a lot of work still to do in the LCA space, in modelling and balancing environmental impacts and, in particular, in working out viable metrics for biodiversity. Biodiversity in terms of the impacts from agriculture are as big a topic as climate change but does not concern a manufacturer of washing machines in the same way. Encouragingly there are a lot of improvements that can be done in all agricultural systems and so one gap is how to integrate farm-based data. In France, Planet Score works with Pour Une Agriculture du Vivant and in the UK a similar tool is being developed by the Global Farm Metric. All told, working out the environmental footprint of food and any product is a complicated challenge. It has to be done inclusively and openly, without fear or favour and with the correct objective in mind. Planet Score is the best bet for all these reasons and that’s why we’ve chosen to promote and support it as well as put all our products through the audit system.
By Charles Redfern, founder, Organico Realfoods