Emission cuts ensure Walkers holds on to carbon label

Crisp manufacturer Walkers has announced that it has become the first company to retain the Carbon Trust's carbon footprint label after successfully cutting emissions related to one of its standard bag of crisps by seven per cent.

Under the Carbon Trust's labeling scheme, companies can only carry a label showing the carbon footprint of their products if they also admit to reduce that footprint year-on-year.

With the initial pilot scheme now two years old, the first wave of companies to sign up are now having to renew their label and prove they have stood by their commitment to cut emissions.

Walkers said that it had aimed to cut its carbon footprint three per cent by 2009, but had exceeded that target following the introduction of a wide range of carbon saving measures, including installing more efficient production line technologies, reducing the weight of packaging, switching to 100 per cent British potatoes and running its delivery fleet on biodiesel conatining five per cent old cooking oil.

The company said that the reduction in emissions had equated to an energy bill saving of over £400,000 over two years and allowed it to change the carbon label on its standard crisps from 85g of CO2 to 80g.

Salman Amin, UK and Ireland president of Walkers' parent company PepsiCo, welcomed the retention of the label, adding that feedback from customers had revealed that the commitment to cutting carbon was helping to enhance the companies competitiveness.

A survey conducted by Populus last month found that not only had understanding of the Carbon Trust's labels increased by 10 percentage points to 36 per cent since the launch of the scheme, but more than half of respondents said they would prioritise a product with a Carbon Reduction Label if the price was the same as one without.

Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said that Walkers' retention of the label provided evidence that the scheme was achieving its primary goal of providing firms with a clear incentive to cut their carbon footprint.

"This achievement shows that by encouraging companies to make public commitments to reduce their emissions via the label, it provides the focus needed to deliver real change," he said.