Huge demand for carbon labels on food products found in survey of 400+ supermarket shoppers
72% of consumers want carbon labels on food products, according to new research among over 400 supermarket shoppers by Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University.
The findings have been released following the Conservative Party’s pledge to introduce a supermarket ombudsman and legislation to enforce “honest labelling” if they are elected.
Zaina Gadema, a logistics and supply chain management researcher at Newcastle Business School, completed the first stage of her study to gauge consumer perceptions on green issues when food shopping, at the end of December.A total of 432 shoppers across all of the UK’s major supermarkets were questioned on their demand for carbon labelling, their knowledge of their personal carbon footprints, whether they think climate change is an important issue when buying food, and whether current carbon labels are easily understood.
83% of shoppers do not know their own personal carbon footprint, but almost three quarters of respondents said that clearer carbon labelling on food products would help them to think ‘green’, the study concluded.63% of those surveyed via a questionnaire thought that carbon labels were a useful indicator for comparing environmental standards, although largely quality and taste (76%) were still deemed more important when purchasing food than environmental issues such as carbon (44%) and food miles (42%).
However, 68% claimed their purchasing behaviour had changed significantly in the past ten years. Consumers stated that their spending habits had shifted towards purchasing more free range (46%), more fair trade (42%), more locally sourced food (32%), and more organic and less processed food products (32%).”In light of the high proportion of consumers expressing a definite shift in shopping habits, these initial findings suggest that concern is indeed high with respect to climate change and food purchasing simultaneously,” Ms Gadema said.
“Overall the dominant theme arising from this research is that consumers would generally like carbon labels on their food products. However, because there is little understanding or knowledge surrounding such information, as well as little in terms of availability of products with carbon footprints, it is difficult for consumers to compare environmental standards via carbon labels even though the majority of respondents think labels would help to do so.
“Greater and clearer use of carbon labels would help even more shoppers associate the importance of climate change with food purchasing.”
