Carbon Footprint Information Research Articles

Feature-based integrated product model for low-carbon conceptual design

ABSTRACTConceptual design has essential impacts on the carbon footprint of a product. Existing product models for conceptual design always focus on knowledge modelling and knowledge organisation, etc. However, the traditional approach is lack of better comprehending representation and reuse of low-carbon design knowledge for low-carbon conceptual design. This paper is devoted to presenting a feature-based integrated modelling approach of product model for low-carbon conceptual design to make the knowledge of functional design be transferred efficiently to the principle conceptual design and structure conceptual design, and even subsequent design process. The feature-based integrated representation model with carbon footprint information about function, effect and structure concept are put forward step by step, and then an integrated principle solution model for low-carbon conceptual design is presented based on the generalised assembly model. The knowledge representation and organisation method of principle solutions in the low-carbon conceptual design are also proposed based on the complex nested knowledge relationships among these stages in the product life cycle. Low-carbon conceptual design process is then discussed in detail. The conceptual design of a new damping device is given as an example, which demonstrates that the methodology is helpful to low-carbon conceptual design.

Consumption and climate change: Why we say one thing but do another in the face of our greatest threat

Abstract There is clear evidence that human beings have contributed to climate change through their patterns of consumption, and, it could be argued that, since we are part of the problem then we must be part of the solution. The apparently good news is that people report that they have very positive attitudes to environmentally-friendly products and they also consistently say that they are prepared to adapt their behavior to ameliorate the effects of climate change. However, numerous studies have found little behavior change on the part of consumers. This study investigates this critical issue experimentally. It does this by exploring whether self-reported attitudes to low carbon products, or alternatively implicit attitudes to such products (measured using an associative task and not requiring self-report), predict consumer choice of products varying on a range of dimensions including environmental consequences, in an experimental context where time for selection was also systematically varied. We found firstly, in line with previous research, that human beings have explicit and implicit attitudes that are not correlated. Secondly, in terms of brand choice, we found that consumers are particularly sensitive to both brand information and value in their selection of products, particularly under time pressure. Organic/eco brands are, however, much less favoured, especially under any time pressure, where processes that are more automatic prevail. Thirdly, color-coded carbon footprint information can influence choice even under time pressure but only for those consumers with a strong positive implicit attitude to carbon footprint. The conclusions from this research are that humans beings may well have a “divided self” when it comes to the environment and climate change, and this underlying “dissociation” in attitude (implicit versus explicit) might be critical to their behavior as consumers. This concept of the“divided self” may help us understand why relatively little has changed thus far with regard to more sustainable consumption, but might open up new lines of enquiry about how we might attempt to promote more sustainable consumption in the future.

Online purchasing creates opportunities to lower the life cycle carbon footprints of consumer products

A major barrier to transitions to environmental sustainability is that consumers lack information about the full environmental footprints of their purchases. Sellers' incentives do not support reducing the footprints unless customers have such information and are willing to act on it. We explore the potential of modern information technology to lower this barrier by enabling firms to inform customers of products' environmental footprints at the point of purchase and easily offset consumers' contributions through bundled purchases of carbon offsets. Using online stated choice experiments, we evaluated the effectiveness of several inexpensive features that firms in four industries could implement with existing online user interfaces for consumers. These examples illustrate the potential for firms to lower their overall carbon footprints while improving customer satisfaction by lowering the "soft costs" to consumers of proenvironmental choices. Opportunities such as these likely exist wherever firms possess environmentally relevant data not accessible to consumers or when transaction costs make proenvironmental action difficult.

Egyptian consumers' willingness to pay for carbon-labeled products: A contingent valuation analysis of socio-economic factors

Carbon emissions from products contribute to anthropogenic climate change. Because of the growing concern over the environmental impact of production and consumption of consumer goods, carbon footprint information started to appear on labels of several products. In this paper we use both parametric and non-parametric econometric models in order to estimate Egyptian consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for carbon-labeled products. Contingent valuation methods based on log-logistic, log-normal and Weibull regression models revealed that consumers in Egypt are willing to pay a price premium of approximately 75 Egyptian pounds (EP) for carbon-labeled products based on the single-bound dichotomous choice (SBDC) model and up to 90 EP based on the double-bound dichotomous choice (DBDC) model. From a socio-economic perspective, results have also revealed that income, age, gender, and educational level have a significant influence on the respondent's WTP. Implications of this study highlight the fact that understanding consumers' preferences for eco-friendly products may play an important role in formulating environmental policy changes to face complex problems as diverse as environmental pollution or global climate change.

Consumer attitudes and preferences on holiday carbon footprint information in the Netherlands

ABSTRACTThis study, part of an R&D project with Dutch tour operators, assessed Dutch consumer preferences towards a carbon label for holiday trips. A general survey (n = 504) assessed the perceived importance of a CO2 label to consumers. To determine the preferred design, two focus groups (n = 15) followed by a panel study (n = 1246) were performed. Finally, a pilot study (n = 100) assessed potential effects of the label on attitude and booking intention. The general survey's results indicate that a carbon label could impact on the travel choice of some Dutch travellers, when label information is explicit, understandable and simply designed. The focus groups in combination with the panel study showed that Dutch consumers prefer a recognisable carbon label, similar to the EU energy label. The pilot study revealed that consumers' attitudes increased significantly, but that intention to book was not significantly affected for the group that was shown the carbon label. These findings contribute to understanding consumer attitudes towards tourism eco and carbon labels, and their content and design. Implementation of a carbon label for tour packages still requires a number of barriers to be resolved. Sustainability remains a low priority during holiday decision-making.

'탄소발자국' 개념의 발전 과정과 농림 부문에서의 활용 전망

The concept of 'carbon footprint' has been developed as a means of quantifying the specific emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) that cause global warming. Although there are still neither clear definitions of the term nor rules for units or the scope of its estimation, it is broadly accepted that the carbon footprint is the total amount of GHGs, expressed as equivalents, emitted into the atmosphere directly or indirectly at all processes of the production by an individual or organization. According to the ISO/TS 14067, the carbon footprint of a product is calculated by multiplying the units of activity of processes that emit GHGs by emission factor of the processes, and by summing them up. Based on this, 'carbon labelling' system has been implemented in various ways over the world to provide consumers the opportunities of comparison and choice, and to encourage voluntary activities of producers to reduce GHG emissions. In the agricultural sector, as a judgment basis to help purchaser with ethical consumption, 'low-carbon agricultural and livestock products certification' system is expected to have more utilization value. In this process, the 'cradle to gate' approach (which excludes stages for usage and disposal) is mainly used to set the boundaries of the life cycle assessment for agricultural products. The estimation of carbon footprint for the entire agricultural and forestry sector should take both removals and emissions into account in the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report. The carbon accumulation in the biomass of perennial trees in cropland should be considered also to reduce the total GHG emissions. In order to accomplish this, tower-based flux measurements can be used, which provide a direct quantification of exchange during the entire life cycle. Carbon footprint information can be combined with other indicators to develop more holistic assessment indicators for sustainable agricultural and forestry ecosystems.

Consumer preferences for food labeling: What ranks first?

In the EU food market, different food labeling schemes co-exist with the aim of informing customers and providing trust on different quality characteristics of food products. To understand which food labeling schemes are the most and the least important for consumers is very relevant because a labeling strategy will be useful for food companies if consumers, or at least one segment of consumers, value food labeling. The aim of this study was to measure the importance consumers attach to different labeling schemes available in the food market. Seven different food labeling schemes, some regulated by the EU (the EU organic logo, the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) indication and the nutritional fact panel) and some of them not yet regulated at the European level (the food miles indication; the local origin; the carbon footprint information; and an improved animal welfare indication), were assessed by consumers. To do this, the direct ranking preference method was used and a rank-ordered mixed logit model was estimated with the data from a survey conducted with food shoppers in a medium-sized Spanish town. The results indicate that the most preferred labeling scheme was the PDO indication, closely followed by the nutritional fact panel and the EU organic logo. In other words, consumers clearly valued labeling schemes that are regulated by EU law. Moreover, consumer preferences for food labeling were heterogeneous and three segments of consumers based on preferences were found: PDO lovers, organic EU logo lovers and the nutritional information lovers.

Extended producer responsibility: a differential fee model for promoting sustainable packaging

Extended producer responsibility in the European Union has been shown to be incapable of promoting environmentally friendly packaging, mainly because of the economic instrument used: the producer fee. To make the producer fee capable of both reflecting and influencing how packaging is produced, we propose a mathematical model for calculating a differential fee (the sustainable producer fee or SPF). The development of the model involves the following steps: the selection of sustainability criteria, the aggregation of criteria using multi-criteria decision making, the formulation of the SPF calculation, and the generation of a web-based interface for packers and product importers to calculate the differential fee applying to their own packaging. The aspects of sustainability considered are environmental aspects resulting mostly from life cycle assessment (e.g., global warming and human toxicity), and social aspects related to environmental information present in/on the packaging (e.g., the recycling bin symbol and carbon footprint information). The mathematical model developed uses the sustainability results provided by the multi-criteria decision making. The fee is higher than the current fixed fee (200.8 €/t) if the level of sustainability is low, that is, if environmental and social impacts are negative, and is lower if the level of sustainability is high. The lowest value of the fee in the sensitivity analysis, 191.89 €/t, was calculated for polyethylene packaging containing 10% of incorporated recycled material, with this recycling information being present in the packaging along with carbon footprint information and the recycling symbol. The highest value, 218.69 €/t, was calculated for polyvinyl chloride packaging without any recycled material and without any environmental information. The model is implemented in a web-based interface, where packers and product importers are able to simulate different types of packaging to reduce the fee. The success of the approach is discussed, as is the potential for changing the packaging behavior of packers and importers and for increasing the level of sustainability of packaging in the near future.

Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products

AbstractConsumers clearly have a role to play in the global fight against climate change, since even relatively small changes in patterns of household consumption could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But what evidence is there that consumers do consider the environmental impacts of products when shopping? Indeed, how psychologically salient the carbon footprint labels that are now appearing on a range of products in various countries? Here we test the psychological salience of this information using eye tracking to identify, on a frame-by-frame basis, individual fixations on various features of the packaging, including carbon footprint. We found that the mean fixation level for carbon footprint was 12.2%, indicating it was indeed as salient as other important features. High or low levels of carbon footprint had no significant effect on gaze fixation. We also found no significant relationship between self-reported attitudes to low carbon products and overall level of fixation, nor was there any significant relationship between implicit attitude and level of fixation. But implicit attitude did significantly impact on the point of first fixation, in that those with a strong positive implicit attitude were significantly more likely to fixate first on carbon footprint information. This suggests that carbon labelling could potentially be effective for

Incorporating the carbon footprint to measure industry context and energy consumption effect on environmental performance of business operations

Three scopes of carbon footprint have become the most suitable methods to measure green house gas (GHG) emissions from business operating activities. Carbon footprint information can enable firms to effectively improve their environmental performance. This paper attempts to develop an approach that incorporates the three scopes of carbon footprint into a data envelopment analysis model to evaluate environmental performance. A research sample is used from top Fortune 500 companies participating in the carbon disclosure project. The results provide empirical evidence that adjustment of the current fossil fuel-based energy structure significantly affects electricity indirect GHG emissions. The results also show that there are significant differences in environmental performance between industries. Governments should focus on designing improved policies and regulations for each separate industry, especially the materials industry.

Eco-sustainable routing in optical networks

It is quite easy to foresee that in the next years, the future generation ultra-high speed network infrastructures and equipments will be no longer constrained only by their pure transport capacity, but also by their energy consumption costs and environmental effects. In particular, large network infrastructures are now widely recognized to play a fundamental role in the emission of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, significantly affecting the environmental sustainability of new evolutions in network architectures as well as technological developments in communication devices. In this paper, a novel eco-sustainable routing and wavelength assignment algorithm, based on shortest path routing with an adaptive link weighting function relying on an extension of the OSPF-TE protocol to convey carbon footprint information, has been proposed to decrease the network ecological impact while balancing the traffic load and maintaining acceptable connection-blocking rate. The trade-off between load balancing and carbon footprint is also analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy within the context of a real world network.

Highway routine maintenance carbon dioxide emissions assessment

Civil infrastructure, including the highway maintenance sector, is under increasing pressure to deliver ‘low-carbon’ services. Reducing this sector's ‘carbon footprint’ can help to meet targets set under the Kyoto Protocol. Carbon dioxide emissions reduction is now a legal requirement under the UK's Climate Change Act; infrastructure clients therefore require their supply chains to provide carbon footprint information. A new, more holistic, project-specific carbon footprinting approach is urgently needed to account for carbon in an integrated manner, identifying areas of carbon hot spots and developing a reduction hierarchy to support business decision making. In this paper a process-based carbon footprinting framework based on the PAS2050:2011 protocol is adopted. Results of case studies (focusing on the carbon footprint) of ‘typical’ UK highway maintenance processes are provided, namely pavement resurfacing, pavement marking, bulk lamp changing and grass cutting. These processes were selected across urban, semi-urban and rural site locations to investigate the significance of these locations on the carbon footprint. The results indicate the robustness of the PAS2050-compliant framework for highway maintenance carbon footprinting; areas of carbon hotspots and related reduction opportunities can be identified to inform the reduction hierarchy across the processes value chain. The research presented can be used as a framework to plan, evaluate and manage highway maintenance programmes and carbon budgets over the maintenance processes value chain.

The impact of fat content, production methods and carbon footprint information on consumer preferences for minced meat

Growing concern over the environmental impacts and other credence characteristics of food has resulted in increasing interest in the quality attributes of meat products in Finland. The aim of this study was to provide information on the relative preferences of consumers for minced meat attributes. Using a choice experiment, we examined whether the meat type, method of production, fat content, price and presence of carbon footprint information have an impact on consumer choice. A low fat content was found to have a particularly positive effect on the choice of a minced meat product. The carbon footprint information had a significant impact on the meat type-specific consumer preferences: the popularity of beef products decreased and of pork products increased when the footprint information was presented to the consumers. Six heterogeneous consumer classes were identified with latent class analysis: price-conscious (23% of the respondents), fat content-conscious (23%), ideological but passive (17%), content with conventional (14%), beef-preferring (12%) and method of production -conscious consumers (11%). Consumers were generally willing to pay more for a low fat content, but the relative willingness to pay estimates were largely dependent on the consumer groups: premiums for organic and animal welfare-oriented production methods also existed. These attributes could thus represent good means for differentiating minced meat products. The impact of carbon footprint information on the willingness to pay estimates was relatively low.

Psychological effectiveness of carbon labelling

Despite the decision by supermarket-giant Tesco to delay its plan to add carbon-footprint information onto all of its 70,000 products, carbon labelling, if carefully designed, could yet change consumer behaviour. However, it requires a new type of thinking about consumers and much additional work.

Impact of meat type, methods of production, fat content, price and carbon footprint information on meat choice

Impact of meat type, methods of production, fat content, price and carbon footprint information on meat choice

Interactive effects of carbon footprint information and its accessibility on value and subjective qualities of food products

We aimed to explore the interactive effects of the accessibility of information and the degree of carbon footprint score on consumers’ value judgments of food products. Participants (n=151, undergraduate students in Japan) rated their maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for four food products varying in information accessibility (active-search or read-only conditions) and in carbon footprint values (low, middle, high, or non-display) provided. We also assessed further effects of information accessibly and carbon footprint value on other product attributes utilizing the subjective estimation of taste, quality, healthiness, and environmental friendliness. Results of the experiment demonstrated an interactive effect of information accessibility and the degree of carbon emission on consumer valuation of carbon footprint-labeled food. The carbon footprint value had a stronger impact on participants’ WTP in the active-search condition than in the read-only condition. Similar to WTP, the results of the subjective ratings for product qualities also exhibited an interactive effect of the two factors on the rating of environmental friendliness for products. These results imply that the perceived environmental friendliness inferable from a carbon footprint label contributes to creating value for a food product.