The Carbon Trust

are a private company set up by the government that are doing some work on the subject of embodied carbon. Embodied carbon is the carbon that is produced by the manufacture, use and disposal of a particular product. Carbon is released in to the atmosphere at most stages of a product's life. It is via the process of life cycle analysis (LCA) that the embodied carbon figure is deduced.

For example, a tin of tomatoes: mining of iron to produce steel (for the tin), smelting the iron to make steal, transporting the steel to the tin making factory, making the tin, transporting the tin to factory to where they put in the tomatoes, consumer buys the tomatoes, cooks them, then throws the tin away, tin goes to land fill. Image: DeWikiMan [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The abode image is not from the carbon trust, but there logo is not open license so I can not use it here. I would suggest not using the carbon trust.

Carbon Trust's fees may sour Eco Labelling movement.

Certification fees of £10 000 pounds may smash small and medium sized businesses hopes of using the "footprint" label.

Gathering all of this information is very costly and smaller companies may be reluctant to undertake the costly work, very high fees charged by the Carbon Trust for certification, advice, and licensed use of their label will also be a negative factors, for firms wishing to help the environment.

It costs roughly 100 times more to put a carbon label on a chocolate cake, than it does to put a nutritional label on the same cake.

It is a massive job, but if people were presented with two tins of tomatoes in the shop both the same price and one had lower carbon then, you would be pleased to make the sound environmental choice, more should be done to help companies help implement labelling schemes.

2019 Carbon Trust Labels - Uptake is Still Minimal

Despite carbon emissions being one of the most important threats to global stability, most shoppers still have no idea regarding the carbon intensity of the products they buy. Particularly when comparing products on a like for like basis.

It has been several years since this page was first published but the

Carbon Trust Website:

http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/default.ct