Common sense may soon prevail in the food miles-carbon footprint debate as Tesco ceo Terry Leahy said today that transporting certain foods around the world may be less harmful to the environment than growing them locally.
Leahy was announcing new research funding to the tune of £25 million over five years for a Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) at the University of Manchester. “We’re seeing a lot of knee jerk responses,” Leahy told journalists at the launch today. “We can pose these questions to the SCI.”
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had already dismissed as too simplistic some consumer calls from developed markets such as the UK not to buy certain air-freighted food products. “It may be that farming from further afield is actually environmentally better, we’ll have to wait and see the numbers,” said Leahy.
Tesco announced in January that it planned to tell its customers about the greenhouse gas emissions of all its products through carbon labelling but Leahy admitted today “ it will take years” to achieve that goal across its entire range. He indicated however, that some carbon labels would appear early next year.
Other un-foreseen spin-offs in the clamour to halt climate change have emerged from the use of biofuels, derived from plants as a transport fuel to replace gasoline and diesel. In the UK, Tesco’s fleet of lorries runs on fuel which comprises 50 per cent biodiesel, while it sells a five percent biofuel blend to its customers. But in its “Biofuels: is the cure worse than the disease?” report from the Organisation for Economic Corporation and Development (OECD), published yesterday, the OECD suggested biofuels could create problems worse than those caused by fossil fuels, such as contributing to increased food prices by using land and crops formerly used to produce food, and heightened pollution where biofuels are derived from formerly forested land cleared by slash and burn.
Nevertheless, Tesco clearly hopes to cash in on rising green awareness among its customers and is well placed to do so given its marketing power and massive economies of scale. “We’ve got to get a way to use mass-marketing techniques in green consumption because people can’t pay more,” said Leahy.
Tesco said its funding of the SCI would cover one professor, five other academics and 20 PhD researchers as well as up to 30PhD students. It also made clear than research findings would not be exclusive to the retailer.
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