Would you buy low carbon yoghurt?
A new study in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics suggests that marketing how a product gets to market could have big implications for how we fight climate change.
The study, conducted by researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Alberta, looked at how Canadian and German consumers respond to water-usage and carbon footprint labelling on toilet paper, ground beef, and yoghurt.
The study found that German consumers “have stronger preferences overall for products with lower footprints than Canadian consumers.” According to the researchers, the findings could help companies better design environmental footprint labeling initiatives.
Labeling ethically-produced or environmentally-friendly products is nothing new. Some milk producers, for instance, are emphasizing the product’s supply chain on the carton. Still, decarbonizing supply chains—and communicating the benefits of doing so to customers—is an area where environmentally-conscious organizations can make further inroads.
Green procurement in action
Procurement plays a big role in a supply chain’s environmental impact. According to the National Energy Board, emissions from freight trucks doubled between 1990 and 2014 due to increasingly on-demand purchasing, while other transportation categories remained flat.
UBC has had sustainable purchasing principles in place since at least 2010, and or the manager of UBC’s procurement operations, sustainable purchasing is a place where big changes can be made in how organizations use resources.
“UBC is a singular, very large landlord and has great ability to enact environmental change,” said Michael Frost, UBC’s manager of supply management and financial operations.
For example, UBC recently converted its heating system from steam to hot water, making heating buildings on campus more efficient. When the university wants to switch to more efficient lightbulbs or water fixtures, its status as a quasi-municipal government makes it relatively easy to do so.
But, “when you start drawing down, [procurement] becomes a relatively small [share of overall greenhouse gas emissions], in a way,” Fros said in an interview with Clean Capital. “The aspect of course is it’s the day to day. It becomes the most challenging to influence. We don’t want to miss those opportunities.”
Paper purchasing is a key area where UBC has cut down. “We try to take the deepest approach possible,” said Frost, noting UBC must report its paper use to the province. “You’re looking at a couple of details around the product itself. For copy paper, it was looking at the post-consumer recycled content.”
By 2010, paperless initiatives and purchasing standards had led to a 65 per cent reduction in paper use over 2000 levels. The university set an initial baseline for post-consumer paper content of 30 per cent, and is discussing bumping that to 50 per cent. Increasingly, UBC is looking at alternatives, including wheat-based paper products.
UBC has also changed how it orders paper, reducing the number of truck trips per week to campus.
“It’s more efficient,” Frost said. “The other piece of sustainability we kind of look towards is the safety aspect, particularly with the Point Grey campus. The more we can reduce delivery trucks wandering around campus, particularly come September with the student population, heads down, maybe playing Pokemon Go, [the better].”
He added that the university now includes sustainability questionnaires in all major tenders. “As much as we’re interested in knowing what are the sustainability attributes [a company] can give to us specifically, it’s also very important to know what they’re doing generally as corporate citizens,” he said.
By Jonny Wakefield, 21 July 2016