International and national examples


Several countries started national GHG reduction programmes:

  •  United Kingdom: a consortium including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the British Standards Institute and the Carbon Trust has been working since 2007 with companies including Tesco, Pepsico, and Innocent drinks to develop a specification for assessing lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of goods and services.
  • France: retailer Casino and Le Clerc has measured lifecycle greenhouse footprints for several hundred of its own-label food products. The French Environment and Standard Agencies are meanwhile developing a new methodology (Grenelle).
  • Germany: a comprehensive project was launched in 2008 to assess the carbon footprint of different products at several companies e.g. Henkel, Tengelmann, Rewe, Tchibo (from washing powder to coffee).
  • Japan: there is a new national guideline for the carbon footprint of products, and pilot studies have been carried out on products from steamed rice to inkjet printers.
  • United States: in 2009, Wal-Mart announced that it aims to measure the full lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from its products.

 

a) examples on international companies 

 

  • Nestlé Purina’s: the US operation produces almost 3 billion aluminium pet food cans each year, but the aluminium industry estimates that only 15-20% of these are recycled. Since a can made of recycled aluminium saves up to 95% of the energy needed to make a can entirely from virgin ore, dumping these cans in landfill rather than recycling them means losing the opportunity to save more than 250.000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Unilever: research showed that at the laundry products 25% to 70% of its greenhouse gas footprint occurs during consumer use. Part of their strategy was to launch new detergent formulas that encouraged consumers to use shorter cycles, lower temperatures, less rinsing and no pre-wash.
  • Media-Saturn Group: in 2007 embarked on a large-scale campaign to promote energy efficient electrical appliances. The idea was to convince consumers that they could help in the fight against climate change while also saving money.
  • Danone: by assessing the CF for yoghurts they determine, that the milk contribution to the GHG emission is about 50%. Cows are polluting the air by emitting methane which has a conversion factor of 23 times bigger that CO2.
  • TESCO: in 2009 opened a store in Manchester which has a carbon footprint 70% smaller than an equivalent store built in 2006. At the moment they assess the CF for a few hundred of products and introduced the CF labelling.
  • Henkel: By developing new products it is taken into account that the average washing temperature in Europe is 46°C, with reducing the temperature to 30°C a GHG reduction of 50% can be reached.
  • Reckitt Benckiser: in 2007 launched ‘Carbon 20’, a groundbreaking initiative to measure and then reduce by 20% the company’s global products’ total carbon footprint across their entire lifecycle by 2020.

 

b) examples of Hungarian companies: the companies mention their commitment to the GHG reduction in their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports are: Dalkia Energia Zrt, Dreher Sörgyárak Zrt., Magyar Posta Zrt, Magyar Telekom Nyrt, OTP Csoport, Siemens Zrt, Tesco Global Áruházak Zrt.

 

The CO2 emission of products during their life cycle (from raw material procurement, manufacturing, logistics, retail, end use and recycling) is different. The highest GHG reduction is obtainable at the steps having the highest emissions as presented below (source: Manchester University)