Archive for May, 2007

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Plan for carbon footprint on every label

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

It seems that retailers are already having trouble getting over complex information about carbon footprints using small labels on products. A fair tracing-style product information system could overcome this difficulty — and also be used to provide much more dynamic information. After all, supply chains are unlikely to remain static throughout the lifetime of a particular product’s packaging design…

Plan for carbon footprint on every label – Daily Telegraph

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs joined forces yesterday with the Carbon Trust, a Government advisory body, to try to agree how to measure greenhouse gases in the manufacturing process.This would allow retailers eventually to label their products with a “carbon point” score in the same way that electrical appliances receive an energy score.

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Head of Indian Coffee Board in London

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

Representatives of the Fair Tracing Team met Krishna Rau, Chairman of the Indian Government’s Coffee Board, in London last Friday. Mr Rau took time between his meetings at the International Coffee Organisation, based only minutes away from UCL in Bloomsbury, to talk to Apurba Kundu, Dorothea Kleine and Ian Brown from the Fair Tracing team about the collaboration between the Coffee Board and the project.

Central to our discussion was Fair Tracing’s effort to strike a balance between our desire to assist the more disadvantaged producers and the need to keep this first phase of the project technically and logistically feasible. At the meeting, Mr Rau offered us useful advice on how to strike this balance in the context of the Indian coffee producers.

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Fair Tracing’s partners at the London Wine Fair

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

“UK consumers flock to Fairtrade” read the display wall of Ehrmanns’ stand at the London International Wine and Spirits Fair 2007. Ehrmanns is currently the UK’s leading Fairtrade wine importer and a key collaboration partner for our Fair Tracing project. Ann Light and Dorothea Kleine were at the Fair and visited both the Ehrmanns stand and the stand of our other key partners, the Chilean Fairtrade Wine producers Los Robles (who sell through Ehrmanns). Export manager Sergio and Chief Oenologist Paula had come over from Chile to offer tastings and talk business with visitors to the stand.

   

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Mobile Phones, Fishing and Economic Growth

Monday, May 21st, 2007

(Picture source: www.economist.com)

The Economist has a story about how mobile phones promote economic growth based on Robert Jensen’s paper entitled The Digital Provide: Information (technology), market performance and welfare in the South Indian fisheries sector.

…starting in 1997 mobile phones were introduced in Kerala. Since coverage spread gradually, this provided an ideal way to gauge the effect of mobile phones on the fishermen’s behaviour, the price of fish…

One particularly popular tale is that of the fisherman who is able to call several nearby markets from his boat to establish where his catch will fetch the highest price. Mr Jensen’s paper adds some numbers to the familiar stories and shows precisely how mobile phones support economic growth…

Mr Jensen’s work is valuable because studies of the economic effect of mobile phones tend to be macroeconomic. A well known example is the finding in 2005 by Leonard Waverman, of the London Business School, that an extra 10 mobile phones per 100 people in a typical developing country leads to an additional 0.59 percentage points of growth in GDP per person.

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Fair Tracing in the news: Fast Company

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

“The Fair Tracing project at Britain’s University of Bradford is developing a digital tag that would tell the backstory behind your bananas–or your coffee or chocolate. “

The magazine, Fast Company, issue 116, June 2007 has a short article on Fair Tracing entitled “Where has your food been?” by Tracy Staedter. The article in full is on the Fast Company website. Find it here.

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Carbon Trust Launches Carbon Reduction Label

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

(Picture source: BBC News)

Carbon Trust reports

The Carbon Trust has launched a new carbon reduction label to provide a measure of a products carbon footprint across its life cycle from source to store, to disposal of the finished product…the label will also allow a business to demonstrate a commitment to manage and reduce the carbon emissions of its product as well as helping everyone in the UK start to make informed decisions about the products that they buy…recent research carried out for the Carbon Trust concludes that companies see climate change as the primary issue likely to impact upon their corporate reputation during 2007…

Read the BBC article.

To find out more or to submit an expression of interest visit www.carbon-label.co.uk.

What do you think about carbon labels? Would such a label affect your purchase decision? Let us know by leaving a comment.

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Not everything is traceable…

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

Of the eight satellite tags the BBC saw attached to walruses in April, seven now appear to have stopped working.

Read the full story at BBC News.

There is another article about the challenges of walrus tagging.

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U.S. Department of Agriculture Releases Report on Animal-Tracking Project

Monday, May 14th, 2007

RFIDJournal reports that the U.S. Agriculture Department recently released a report, which concluded that

“animal identification and tracing can be implemented successfully in a production environment…RFID led to more accurate records, more efficient record keeping and a reduction in errors and labor costs…By tagging cattle, producers qualified them as source-verified beef, making them eligible for industry-sponsored cash incentives at the time the animals were sold.”

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Wal-Mart sees Green Potential in RFID

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

RFID Journal reports that Wal-Mart sees great potential in RFID to achieve more efficient supply chains.

Wal-Mart predicts that in helping to track inventory more accurately, RFID will improve sustainability by reducing unnecessary truck deliveries, as well as by reducing customers’ trips to the store for items that were out of stock during their initial visit. “Twenty-four million people shop our stores every day. If only 100,000 extra trips are saved by having stock there,” he said, exhaust emissions would drop, benefiting the environment.

Clearly, there will be also a financial benefit in this:

But it’s not just the planet that serves to benefit from such plans. Out-of-stocks, Ford explained, costs Wal-Mart and its suppliers lost sales amounting to about 2 percent of the retailer’s entire sales—and almost half of that 2 percent is the result of inventory inaccuracies. If RFID were to resolve about 10 percent of that inaccuracy, he predicted, the retailer and its suppliers could gain about $250 million annually.

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The LEAF Tracking System

Friday, May 4th, 2007

LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) have a tracking system deployed that allows users to gather more information about LEAF certified products using the LEAF product code on the product.

LEAF tracks lets you find out who produced your LEAF Marque certified food. Enter the LEAF Tracks number below and the search will display the producer’s details. Note that not all producers display their full details, but many do and some are demonstration farms that you can visit if you wish. A map of the farm can be displayed by clicking on the postcode; there is also the ability to view an aerial photograph of the farm by clicking the camera icon.

According to Caroline Drummond, Chief Executive of LEAF, farmers control the information that are displayed about them.

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