Environmental Audit Committee report on environmental labelling

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has recently published a report on environmental labelling. Key points as follows:

• Labels can be an important influence on consumer behaviour
• There's a risk of having too many labels undermining consumer understanding and confidence.
• There's a need for universal labels backed by auditing and accreditation
• Government needs to put more resources into labels and set standards and perameters. The effectiveness of labels can be increased with use of fiscal measures
• Labels are only effective if there's information backing them up so consumers know what they're making choices about.
• There's a growing problem of greenwash - government should police this
• Labelling's real potential lies with its role in stimulating changes in business practice. Government should work with business and ensure labels are underpinned by proper systems for analysis, audit and accreditation.
• Carbon labelling is crucially important. Ideally the food industry and services sector should develop a credible and verifiable label but in practice - as in the case of food labelling, it may be that the best and clearest label allowing the easiest consumer choice has to be developed by a statutory agency and the Government will in due course have to consider the need to legislate for a sector-based universal labelling scheme. Indeed there is a strong argument for environmental and indeed ethical labelling to build on the lead given by the Food Standards Agency with their 'traffic light' approach and for government to expand this established and well-understood way of communicating with consumers into other areas. Above all, the Government should support clarity, simplicity and consistency in labelling.

A few of the report's main comments on carbon labelling:

Carbon labelling cannot account for all environmental impacts or be a universal environmental label. But the value of the carbon label will be increasingly important as consumers' awareness and knowledge of embedded carbon grows. Embedded carbon labelling is a form of environmental label that can be applied to all products and all sectors, and may be the single most important measure, given the challenge we face in decarbonising the economy. It is necessary to support efforts to raise an individual's awareness of their overall consumption of carbon, like the Act on CO2 campaign, and to support the goal of reducing the carbon intensity of products.

The Government should encourage carbon labelling for all products and services as a priority but ultimately as part of a universal and comprehensive environmental labelling scheme. It should legislate for this if necessary.

An asymmetric devolution of powers presents a challenge to the development of legislation for a UK wide labelling scheme and the Government should open discussions with the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Executive on how a UK wide
sector-based universal labelling scheme can be developed.

The Government should investigate how any sector-based universal labelling scheme could be used by companies, national and local government and other organisations to report on their environmental performance. An annual report carrying the 'traffic light' environmental impact label would inevitably hide much complex methodology and require rigorous auditing but it would send an admirably simple and effective message to shareholders and other stakeholders.