UK: Tesco under fire on organic food's carbon footprint

Today Tesco announced that it is soon to launch The Carbon Reduction Label on 20 of its own-brand products, including laundry detergent, orange juice, potatoes and lightbulbs. But the Soil Association says that it is excluding one factor in its labelling, as two of the products -- organic tomatoes and potatoes -- actually produce no more and sometimes even less greenhouse gases than their non-organic counterparts.

The Soil Association welcomes Tesco's news about carbon labelling, but points out that the researchers haven't included what the charity calls 'soil carbon', which is carbon stored or released in agricultural soils. According to the Soil Association, organic farming stores between 100-400kg of CO2 per hectare each year because it requires the planting of grass in its crop rotations and the use of manure and compost instead of carbon-intensive artificial nitrogen fertilisers.

Essentially this means that the amount of CO2 Tesco puts on its organic products won't reflect their real carbon footprints, which would be smaller.

Peter Melchett, Policy Director at the Soil Association, says: "Overall, organic farming has a reduced carbon footprint as it stores carbon in the soil, as well as using less fossil fuel energy. Given this omission, the Tesco findings for the carbon footprint for organic potatoes and tomatoes are particularly positive."

The Carbon Trust developed The Carbon Reduction Label to tell customers how much CO2 and other greenhouse gases are being produced through the lifecycle of a product, including production, transport, use and disposal. In determining the carbon footprint of Tesco's products, The Carbon Trust has used the PAS 2050 draft standard for products' carbon footprinting, which it is developing together with DEFRA and BSI British Standards. This draft does not include 'soil carbon', which is why the carbon footprints of Tesco's organic tomatoes and potatoes don't reflect the potential extra deductions of CO2 that the Soil Association refers to.

We talked to a spokesperson from The Carbon Trust, who explained: "The inclusion of soil carbon within the PAS 2050 has been considered by the agricultural working group established to assist the standard's development. However, at this stage it has been decided that it should not be included due to the fact that changes in organic carbon in soil can vary under different agricultural practices."

Besides Tesco, Walkers and Boots have also worked with The Carbon Trust to find out the carbon footprint on selected products.

Source: smartplanet.com

Publication date: 5/5/2008

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