A few months ago we integrated the carbon footprint calculator into barcoo for (selected) categories. And so our next step is as difficult as it is obvious: to feature the carbon footprint calculator for specific products. Some manufacturers believe it’s not worth spending so much money on collecting the data necessary to do that. They would rather put their money into directly into reducing CO2 emissions. But when they do that, there’s no way to measure how much “good” it’s actually done. At any rate, they believe that it has a positive impact. But we believe, for the medium term, that measuring CO2 emissions in an exact way is not so costly and will lay the foundations for controlled CO2 reduction.

In 2009 Frosta became the first food manufacturer in Germany to participate in the Product Carbon Footprint project. Since then, the company has assessed the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions expended as a result of its products. They traced the entire production chain for each of their frozen foods, factoring in raw material production, transportation, storage, processing, distribution, retail, and usage (the consumer’s shopping trip, preparation, washing). Based on the results for most of the products, they could determine that raw materials make up the highest portion of CO2 emissions (about 50%), while further processing and manufacturing logistics make up about 20% and the consumer is (on average) responsible for about 30%.

When you scan the Frosta products in question, you’ll be provided with information about its carbon footprint, from its supplier to its consumer, in grams. We encourage all other manufacturers to provide us with their CO2 information for individual products so we can integrate them into barcoo.