Marshalls paves out route towards carbon labelling future

Marshalls yesterday announced that it has successfully completed a project to place carbon labels on more than 500 of its products, allowing domestic customers of the paving and landscaping firm to easily assess the carbon footprint of different products.

The company said that following an 18 month project with the Carbon Trust, it had measured the full lifecycle carbon footprint of 503 different products in line with the recently published PAS 2050 standard. It added that it would now carry the Carbon Trust's label displaying products' carbon footprints on its entire portfolio of domestic products.

A number of companies, including Tesco and Boots, have trialled the Carbon Trust label on a number of products, but Marshalls' group marketing director Chris Harrop said that the decision to put labels on an entire range of products meant that customers could genuinely start to use the labels to manage down their own carbon footprint.

"An important part of the work with the Carbon Trust was the decision to label the entire range," he said. "We wanted to ensure that consumers were able to make real comparisons and educated decisions about the carbon impact of their product choice, and this can only be done if an entire range is labelled."

For example, the company said that a customer looking to lay a new patio would now be able to consider the climate change impact of selecting its imported natural sandstone with a footprint of 28kg CO2 per metre squared as opposed to its "Saxon" tiles with a footprint of just 14kg CO2 per metre squared.

Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, said that the carbon labeling project would also help Marshalls cut its carbon emissions. "Working with the Carbon Trust means Marshalls can identify opportunities to reduce emissions across its supply chain and give them the ability to compare products across an entire range," he explained.