Our group was made up of the 'greenies' and we set to task tackling a huge problem: Most people rarely think about where the products they purchase come from and the impacts of their purchases. We decided to study the orange juice that we had for breakfast, from the source of growing and processing in Brazil, shipping to the US, reprocessing in America, and then shipping nationwide and to our plate. Although I had thought about this issue before, putting it within the framework of a presentation or media blurb forced the group to be concise and simple in our presentation. As a result we made a human supply chain, and with each member of the group representing one step of the process. Our solution was to have an ecolabel on products (or a service where one could text for this information) that was easily accessible to the consumer.Eventually, if these labels were to take hold, there might be opportunities for the OJ company to find efficiencies in their supply chain and reduce total global impact (and thus achieve a better ecolabel rating). For example, there might be more (but smaller) reprocessing plants all over the US so that the product can be shipped in concentrate form more energy efficiently. Or, more oranges can be sourced locally. [We actually discussed this exact topic in Jin Whang's Supply Chain class earlier this quarter..]
I think it worked too well. The OJ consumption rate at lunch went wayyyy down.
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Tesco, a UK supermarket chain, pledged to carbon-label all of their products: www.tesco.com/climatechange/
From the nonprofit end, Climate Counts, www.climatecounts.org/, aims to score whole companies on their climate change efforts, with the aim to educated consumers and move them to action.
Working out the details of these labeling schemes will definitely be challenging, but a huge step in providing the right tools to consumers at a key decision point - right at the shelf.
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