Labeling Jeans’ Carbon Emissions
As environmentally friendly labels have proliferated, the meaning of those claims has become increasingly vague. Now some large companies are trying to better define such terms.
Walmart, DuPont, and General Electric, among other companies, have joined international consortiums that aim to develop a single metric for measuring carbon dioxide emissions associated with a product. They hope that if there’s a single up-front method, it will be easier to distinguish companies that make substantial environmental strides from those with merely a green spin. “If we have a competitor out there making claims, and we’re making claims, we really want to make sure that there’s a standard,” says Robert ter Kuile, senior manager of energy and climate change with PepsiCo International.