South African fruit exporter Colors is among seven companies forming the third wave of partners in a ground-breaking carbon emissions trial. The Carbon Trust is running the trial of the draft Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2050, the standard for assessing the lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of goods and services, being developed with Defra and BSI British Standards.

Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said: “We are delighted that the product carbon footprinting and labelling initiative is expanding month by month, with more and more companies wanting to work with us. It is encouraging that increasing numbers of businesses are looking for ways to reduce their impact on the environment by driving the lifecycle carbon emissions of products out of their supply chains. Consistently testing the applicability of the draft PAS 2050 standard is still crucial in ensuring that we establish a credible, comparable and universal methodology which can be applied across different business sectors and product categories”.

Colors’s David Farrell, director: group strategy and carbon project leader said: “As a company strongly dependent on access to distant export markets (particularly the UK) and with our reliance on agriculture and farmed products, climate-change, with all its potential impacts, was recognized in 2006 as a challenge that demanded a decisive response. As such, a joint-project between ourselves, Safmarine and our three UK importers, namely, Malet Azoulay, MMUK and Empire World Trade, was established. Together we have set out to determine the carbon footprint of our export supply-chain into the UK.

"What we wanted at the outset was a credible and verifiable footprint calculation methodology and one which would enable us to accurately determine the sources of emissions across the chain from farm right through to retailer and which would enable us to identify and implement meaningful emissions reductions. The Carbon Trust with its PAS 2050 LCA methodology has provided us with the guidance and tools to achieve this. We are delighted to be part of the Carbon Trust’s piloting of the carbon footprinting standard and at being the first South African B2B pilot."

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