Carbon footprints.doc

Carbon footprints
碳足迹
Following the footprints
追寻碳足迹
Environment: Carbon-footprint labels, which indicate a product’s environmental impact, are quietly spreading. Consumers may not have noticed them yet, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes
环境：用以表明一个产品的环境影响的碳足迹标签，正悄悄流行起来。也许仍未引起消费者的注意，但已有诸多事情发生在在公众视线之外
Jun 2nd 2011 | from the print edition

DO YOU look for carbon-footprint labels on goods when shopping? If you do, you are in a small minority. The practice of adding labels to foods and other products, showing the quantity (in grams) of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with making and transporting them, began in 2007 when the world’s first such labels were applied to a handful of products sold in Britain. The idea was that carbon labels would let shoppers identify products with the smallest carbon footprints, just as other labels already indicate dolphin-friendly tuna, organic milk or Fairtrade coffee. Producers would compete to reduce the carbon footprints of their products, and consumers would be able to tell whether, for example, locally made goods really were greener than imported ones.
在购物时你会查看产品的碳足迹标签吗？少数人会这么做，如果你会，你当属其中一员。对食物和其他产品加上这个标签来说明在制作和运输过程中的二氧化碳排放量（以克为计算单位），这个做法始于2007年，当时世界上第一种类似的标签应用于英国的一小部分产品。这个想法是，碳标签能让购物者识别出含有最少碳足迹的产品，这类似于其他种标签的用法，比如未危及海豚而捕捉的金枪鱼、有机牛奶、公平贸易咖啡。生产商也许会竞相减少自身产品的碳足迹，这样消费者就能够识别出，比如说，本土制造的产品是否要比进口的更加环保。
Carbon labels have yet to become as widely recognised by consumers as other eco-labels, however. A survey carried out in 2010 by Which?, a British consumer group, found that just a fifth of British shoppers recognised the carbon footprint label, compared with recognition rates of 82% for Fairtrade and 54% for organic labelling. This is understandable, because carbon labelling is a much more recent development—organic labelling dates back to the 1970s, and Fairtrade to the late 1980s—and the right ways to do it are still being worked out. Adding a carbon label to a product is a complex and often costly process that involves tracing its ingredients back up their respective supply chains and through their manufacturing processes, to work out their associated emissions. According to 3M, an American industrial giant that makes over 55,000 different products, this can cost $30,000 for a single product. To further confuse matters, different carbon footprinting and labelling standards have emerged in different countries, preventing direct comparisons between the various types of label.
然而，碳标签仍未如其它环保标签那样得到消费者的广泛认可。在2010年，英国某一消费者团体进行了一项调查，发现只有五分之一的英国购物者认得碳足迹标签，而认得公平贸易标签和有机标签的比例却分别达到82%和54%。这倒在情理之中，有机标签早始于1970年代，公平贸易标签则在1980年代后期兴起，而碳标签还是相对新生的事物，且推行方法仍有待考究。将碳标签加于产品是一个复杂的且通常是成本甚高的过程，涉及追寻到产品各自的供应链以及生产过程才能知晓它的成分，以确定这些成分的排放情况。根据生产55000多种不同产品的美国工业巨头3M所言，这么做可能会使每个产品花费3万美元。让事情更为混乱的是，不同的国家出现了不同的碳足迹和标签标准，这使得不同的标签之间无法做直接的比较。
Even so, proponents of carbon labels now see encouraging signs of progress. In Britain, a pioneer in carbon labelling, nine out of ten households bought products with carbon labels last year, albeit mostly unwittingly, and total sales of such products exceeded £2 billion ($3.1 billion). This exceeded the total sales of organic products (£1.5 billion) or Fairtrade products (£800m) and is largely due to the addition by Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, of carbon labels to more than 100 of its own-brand products, including pasta, milk, orange juice and toilet paper. (Tesco said in 2007 that it would put carbon labels on every one of the 70,000 products it sells; so far it has managed to label 500 products.)
即便如此，碳标签的支持者如今还是看到了可喜的发展。英国是碳标签的始祖，在去年每十户家庭中就有九户购买带有碳标签的产品，尽管大多数是无意识的作为，这些产品的总销量超过了20亿英镑（31亿美元）。此数额超过了有机产品的总销量（15亿英镑）以及公平贸易产品（8亿英镑），这大部分归功于英国的最大零售商Tesco给其100多种自有品牌产品加上了碳标签，包括意大利面、牛奶、橙汁和卫生纸。（Tesco在2007年称将会对其在售的7万种产品一一加上碳标签；目前它已成功在500种产品上加了碳标签。）
“In the last 12 months, carbon footprinting has become common currency,” says Harry Morrison of the Carbon Trust, a consultancy funded by the British government which has footprinted more than 5,000 products worldwide, from building materials to pharmaceuticals. Similar carbon-labelling initiatives have been launched in many countries, measurement techniques are gradually being formalised and a global standard is in the works. Although consumers have yet to embrace the idea, the quiet spread of carbon labels is being driven by companies, which have come to see the value of determining the carbon footprints of their products.
“在过去的12个月里，碳足迹已普遍可见，”受英国政府资助的一家咨询机构the Carbon Trust的Harry Morrison如是说。这家机构已经对全球5000多种产品加上碳足迹，涉及建筑材料到药物。许多国家也发起了类似的碳标签倡议，量定碳排放的技术逐渐正式化，全球标准也在制定当中。尽管消费者仍未信奉这个做法，但企业正推进碳标签的平稳应用，企业已经开始看到确定其产品碳足迹的重要性。
Footprinting’s first steps
碳足迹的起步
The earliest carbon-footprint labels, which appeared in 2007, indicated the promise of the idea but also highlighted the complexity of making it work. Among the first products to have carbon labels applied were the cheese-and-onion potato crisps made by Walkers, a brand owned by PepsiCo, which were found by the Carbon Trust to have a footprint of 75 grams per packet. This figure, printed on the packet with the Carbon Trust’s “black footprint” logo, included the emissions associated with growing the potatoes, turning them into crisps, packaging them, delivering them to shops and disposing of the packaging after use. National averages were used to calculate the transport and disposal emissions.
最早的碳足迹标签，出现于2007年，展现了这个想法的前景，但也强调了其推广的复杂性。应用碳标签的最早产品是百事可乐公司下属品牌沃克斯的起司葱香炸薯片，由Carbon Trust发起，每袋含有75克的碳足迹。这个碳足迹标签，印在袋子上和Carbon Trust的“黑足迹”标志一起，包括种植土豆、土豆转化为炸薯片、包装、交付给商店以及食后包装袋处理的这么些过程所排放的总碳量。运输和处理过程的碳排放量一般是用国家平均值来计算。
It is not so much the label itself that matters, but the process that must be gone through to create it.
标签本身并不大重要，如何创建它的过程却很重要。
Carbon labels need not just measure carbon-dioxide emissions. Where appropriate, emissions of other greenhouse gases, such as nitrous-oxide from soils and methane emissions from animals, are also taken into account. These are turned into “carbon-dioxide equivalent” emissions using suitable conversion factors: 1g of methane is commonly taken to have the same global-warming potential as 21g of carbon dioxide, for example.
碳标签需要的不仅是对二氧化碳排放量的量定。其他温室效应气体的排放，比如由动物排放的氮氧化物和甲烷，只要是适用的，都要考虑进去。依靠合适的转换因素可以将这些气体的排放量变为等同于二氧化碳的：比如，1克甲烷通常产生的全球变暖效应相当21克二氧化碳所产生的。
The process of calculating the carbon footprint for Walkers crisps revealed an unexpected opportunity to save energy. It turned out that because Walkers was buying its potatoes by gross weight, farmers were keeping their potatoes in humidified sheds to increase the water content. Walkers then had to fry the sliced potatoes for longer to drive out the extra moisture. By switching to buying potatoes by dry weight, Walkers could reduce frying time by 10% and farmers could avoid the cost of humidification. Both measures saved money and energy and reduced the carbon footprint of the final product.
对沃克斯薯片量定碳足迹的过程出其不意地显示出一个节约能源的有利可能。此过程表明，由于沃克斯按毛重来购买土豆，农民可以将土豆放在潮湿的棚屋里以增加其含水量。那么沃克斯就必须花上更长的时间来炸切成片的土豆以去除多余的水分。换成用干重来购买土豆，沃克斯能减少10%炸土豆的时间，农民也可以节省加湿的成本。两种方法都节省了金钱和能源，并能减少最终产品的碳足迹。
The value of carbon footprinting and labelling lies in identifying these sorts of savings, rather than informing consumers or making companies look green. According to a report issued in 2009 by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, in England, “the main benefits of carbon labelling are likely to be incurred not via communication of emissions values to consumers, but upstream via manufacturers looking for additional ways to reduce emissions. It is not so much the label itself that matters, in other words, but the process that must be gone through to create it. Walkers has reduced the footprint of its crisps by 7% since the introduction of its first carbon labels. Indeed, to use the Carbon Trust’s label, companies must do more than just measure the footprint of a product: they must commit themselves to reducing it.
碳足迹和标签的价值在于鉴别这种节省，而不只是让消费者知情或者使生产商看起来更环保些。据2009年廷道尔气候变化研究中心在曼彻斯特大学发布的一则报告称，在英国，“碳标签的主要好处可能是不会通过将碳排放观念向消费者推广，而是通过寻求其他方法来减少排放的生产商在生产过程前阶段中来实现。”换言之，标签本身并不大重要，但如何创建它的过程却很重要。自其引入第一份碳标签起，沃克斯减少了薯片7%的碳足迹。诚然，使用Carbon Trust 的标签企业必须要做的不仅仅是量定一个产品的碳足迹，还必须致力于减少它。

Another of the early products to receive a carbon label was a shampoo sold by Boots, a British pharmacy chain. Shampoo is an example of a product where the footprint associated with using the product—the so-called “use phase” emissions—can be comparable to, or even greater than, the manufacturing footprint. Initially, says Mr Morrison, the Carbon Trust’s carbon labels did not include use-phase emissions, because these can vary enormously depending on consumer behaviour. The emissions associated with a bottle of shampoo depend on how long you spend in the shower, how hot the water is and what sort of boiler you have.
获得碳标签的另一早期产品是英国药房连锁博姿的香波。香波是个如何将碳足迹与产品使用相结合的例子——所谓“使用阶段”的碳排放，可与生产阶段的碳足迹相提并论甚至更大。Mr Morrison说，the Carbon Trust的碳标签起初并不包括使用阶段的排放，因为这阶段的排放会因消者的行为而存有差异。一瓶香波的碳排放取决于洗浴的时间长短，水的热度以及热水器的类型。

For many products, in short, the manufacturing footprint does not give the full picture. This is particularly true for electrical goods that are designed to use less energy. Improving energy-efficiency often involves more elaborate manufacturing processes that increase the product’s manufacturing footprint. But in use, such products use less energy, so their overall footprint, considered over their entire life cycle, is smaller. A good example is flat-screen LCD televisions compared with old-style cathode-ray-tube models. “The energy consumption in use has got much better, but the manufacturing process has got more complicated,” says Mr Morrison. As a result, the Carbon Trust’s carbon labels now include use-phase emissions. These are estimated by making statistical assumptions about consumer behaviour.
简而言之，对许多产品来说，生产阶段的碳足迹并未能为整体的碳排放给出充分的说明。对电子产品来说尤其如此，电子产品一般在设计上会更节能些。提高能源效率通常包括更精心的生产过程，增加产品在生产过程的碳足迹。但在使用时，这些产品更节能，所以从整个生命周期来看它们的碳足迹总额是比较小的。LCD平板电视和老式的显像管电视作对比就是最好的例子，“使用过程中的能源消耗更少了，但制作工程却变得更复杂了，”Mr Morrison如是说。因此，the Carbon Trust的碳标签现在包含了使用阶段的碳排放。这些碳排放是通过是对消费者行为进行统计假设来估算的。
For some goods, customer behaviour can make a dramatic difference to the use-phase emissions. A life cycle analysis carried out for Levi Strauss, an American maker of casual wear, found that 57% of the carbon footprint of its 501 jeans was due to the emissions associated with washing them—assuming, that is, that the jeans were washed in warm water and machine-dried. Washing them in cold water and drying them on a line, however, reduces the use-phase emissions by 90%. Adding this sort of information to product labels can encourage buyers to minimise the use-phase emissions—but only if they actually read the label and act on its advice.
由于消费者行为的差异，某些产品在使用阶段的碳排放也大有相同。美国休闲装生产商Levi Strauss进行的一项寿命周期分析发现，其生产的501件牛仔裤中57%的碳足迹来自于清洗阶段的碳排放。然而，用冷水清洗和挂在一根绳子上晾干可以减少90%的使用阶段的碳排放。在产品标签上加上这种信息能够劝导购买者将使用阶段的排放减少至最低——但只有当他们的确领会了标签并且按照那个建议去做。
Given such wide variations, so-called “product category” rules are needed to ensure comparability between carbon labels on similar products. Those product-category rules, in turn, must be harmonised between countries to ensure compatibility between carbon-labelling schemes, which are growing in number and diversity.
一旦把这些广泛的差异考虑在内，就需要所谓的“产品种类”规则来保证同类产品的碳标签之间的可比性。反之，这些产品种类规则，必须在国与国之间取得一致以保证碳标签计划的相容性，这些计划在数量上和种类上都日趋繁多。
In Japan the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry launched a calculation and labelling programme in 2008 which has signed up more than 300 retailers and manufacturers. As part of this scheme METI has established product-category rules for 53 products. South Korea’s environment ministry has introduced a “CooL label”, now sported by over 220 products, including furniture, rice and consumer electronics. In Thailand the government is piloting labels on 65 products from T-shirts to ceramic tiles, and is developing product-category rules for rice, textiles and chicken. Other labels have been launched in America, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden.
日本经济产业省（METI）在2008年发起了一项对碳进行量定和标签的计划，其中有300多家零售商和生产商签署执行。作为这个计划的一部分，MET为53种产品建立了产品种类规则。南韩的环境部引入了“减碳标签”，现已普及220多种产品，包括家具、稻米以及家用电子产品。在泰国，政府正对65种产品试行碳标签，从T恤到瓷砖，且正对稻米、纺织品和鸡肉实施产品种类规则。美国、加拿大、瑞士和瑞典也发起了各种其他标签。
But the country that is now making the running is France. Casino, a French retail chain, introduced carbon labels on 100 of its own-brand products in 2008 and has since added labels to another 400 items. Its Carbon Index labels show the carbon footprint per 100g of final product (use-phase emissions are not included). E. Leclerc, another French retailer, has pioneered two novel twists on carbon labelling in a handful of its stores. It has fixed labels to store shelves showing the carbon emissions per kilogram of produce next to the usual price tags showing cost per kilogram. And by roughly estimating the carbon footprints of 20,000 of its products (by dividing them into 600 generic categories) it can produce a total footprint for an entire trolley of goods that appears on the store receipt. Signs show consumers how their trolley’s footprint compares with the average.
但如今走在前位的是法国。法国零售连锁Casino对其100种自有商标的产品引入了碳标签，自那以后更是对其他400种也加上了标签。其碳指标标签标说明的是最终产品每100克得碳足迹（不包括使用阶段的）。另一家法国零售商E. Leclerc也在旗下的一些店倡导了碳标签的两项新奇进展。它在货架上设置标签，在说明每千克成本的常用价格标签旁边说明每千克产品的碳排放量。而且，通过对其2万种产品的大约估算（通过将这些产品分为600类），它能够为商店进货单上一整手推车的产品加上碳标签。这些标签向顾客表明如何将他们手推车里的碳足迹与平均值做比较。
The French exception
特立独行的法国
These initiatives by French retailers are being backed by government action. A year-long experiment will begin in July, involving 168 firms in a range of industries, to apply carbon labels to products including clothing, furniture and cleaning products. An accompanying campaign will try to raise awareness of carbon labels among consumers. This is a prelude to the planned introduction of compulsory carbon-labelling rules, possibly as soon as 2012, which will apply to imported goods as well as those made in France. The new rules, devised by AFNOR, the French Standards Agency, require labels to show more than just the carbon footprint. Depending on the product category, they must also include other environmental data, such as the product’s water footprint and impact on biodiversity. Product-category rules have already been drawn up by AFNOR and the French environment ministry for shoes, wood, furniture, shampoo and fabric chairs. The project is the result of Grenelle 2, a law passed in 2010 which marks the first time a government has tried to make environmental labelling mandatory.
法国零售商的这些创新举措受到政府的支持。自7月起便开始了为期一年的试验，涉及一系列工业中的168家公司，应用碳标签的产品包括有时装、家具和清洁用品。一场随之而来的活动将试图提高消费者对碳标签的认知。这是有计划地引进强制性碳标签规则的前奏，这种规则最快可在2012年实行，届时会应用于进口产品和国内自产产品。由法国标准化协会（AFNOR）制定的新规则要求标签说明的不仅仅是碳足迹。依照产品种类，它们必须也包括其他的环境数据，比如产品的水足迹和对生物多样性的影响。产品种类规则已由AFNOR和法国环境部制定，涉及鞋子、木材、家具、香波和布艺椅。这个规则是2010年通过的法规Grenelle 2的成果，此规则标志着政府首次试图强制使用环境标签。
Engaging suppliers is vital. Many firms control only a small part of their products’ footprints.
有心参与的供应商是关键。许多企业控制着只有一小部分的产品碳足迹。
Other European countries will be watching the French experiment closely, not least because their own exporters may soon hav