Hello, and welcome to the Label Series. This series of blogs will look at what labels actually mean, what labels to look for if you’re trying to be sustainable, and which ones to avoid. This will include both ingredients and packaging of products, and will be focused on UK labels. So today, I will be going through what labels are supposed to do, how they work and what we can expect in the future.
In a nutshell, labels are designed to inform. If it’s a food label, it’s to tell us what is in the food we’re consuming. If it’s packaging, it’s to tell us what it is made of and how to dispose of it. So, do companies have a duty to inform us of how sustainable a product is? I’d argue that they do. If consumers are aware of what each product costs the planet, they may think twice about purchasing it, or choose something that is more sustainable. The labels that we see on products can generally only be used if they meet certain demands, which I will go through in detail for each label, however there are some that are less specific. The one that springs to mind as an example of this is the ‘widely recyclable’ label, which is often on packaging. Whether things can be recycled often depends on where you live. So, labels can be confusing, and this series aims to make things clearer.
What will labels look like in the future? Well, there was a push in 2007 to include a carbon footprint label on products, with retailers like Tesco at the forefront. There was a government backed scheme to include carbon emissions on products from food to cosmetics, with some companies joining in. However, companies found that the scheme was too time-consuming and expensive, so it was ended. But hopefully, this kind of informative packaging will increase in the future. The traffic light system that we have now that shows the calories, saturates, fat, salt and sugar in food, was widely opposed by businesses because they thought that it would decrease sales, and yet now, that label is widely used. So, change can happen.
So that’s the introduction to the Label Series! Each week I will discuss a category of labels, including food ingredient labels, clothing material labels and packaging labels. They will all be aded to the folder ‘The Label Series’ on this blog.
Sources:
Waste Makes Waste 