Can products and services be labeled in such a way to allow proper quantification of environmental impact at the consumer, household, and institutional levels?

Any attempt to link educational efforts, social campaigns, and even the spread of Earth Systems scientific knowledge with behavioral change capable of causing significant positive environmental consequences will require quantification of environmental impact at the individual, household, and institutional levels. However, such quantification is still very complex, coarse, and innacurate. Basic and applied reasearch, as well as standardization and policy making will be fundamental in this area. Just like WeightWatchers count calories based on product labels, so ClimateWatchers should be able to count GHG emissions. Environmental impact labels should be mandatory, but we don’t have such labels, neither the science to provide the information to print on these labels.

2 comments

1. EMMICSU says:

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   Certainly should products and services be bidirectionally labelled, either “source-based” and “end-driven” (e.g. consumers, endpoints, sinks, etc) through novel tracing devices. This labelling can be portable, free of charge and a check-towards-global citizenship.
2. Joyashree says:

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   It is important to explore how much behaviourial change can contribute and in what time scale and how it can be activated to respond faster towards mitigation.