Food And Drink Products With Pro-environment Ecolabels Are More Appealing To Shoppers

Food And Drink Products With Pro-environment Ecolabels Are More Appealing To Shoppers Defotoberg/Shutterstock

What’s for dinner tonight? If it’s a choice between beef or tofu, it might help to know there’s a 50-fold difference in greenhouse gas emissions between these products and a 200-fold difference in how much land is used to create them, according to recent research. The choices people make in supermarket aisles can affect how sustainable food systems are, but how do you know which to choose when you’re confronted with multiple options of the same product?

Ecolabels were invented in the late 1970s to help consumers tell the difference between a product with a large ecological footprint – produced and distributed in a way that releases lots of greenhouse gases or consumes a lot of natural habitat – and a product with a smaller one. Globally, there are thought to be more than 120 different types of ecolabels in use on food and drink products. If you live in the UK, you might recognise the Marine Stewardship Council logo, the Carbon Reduction label, or the Rainforest Alliance Certified badge.

Food And Drink Products With Pro-environment Ecolabels Are More Appealing To Shoppers Rainforest Alliance-certified fruit and vegetables feature the famous frog ecolabel. K I Photography/Shutterstock

These ecolabels are certainly well intentioned, but how effective are they in encouraging consumers to make green choices? In a new systematic review, we found that people given the option of a food or drink product with an ecolabel and one without are more likely to choose the former.


 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

How ecolabels stack up

Our team of researchers reviewed 56 different studies which had tested how different ecolabels affected the choices of 42,768 shoppers. With so many ecolabels in circulation, there’s no consistent format across products, so we wanted to know how important the design and content of a label was. We classified labels according to their text and logo and their overall message, such as “organic”, “low-carbon” and “pesticide-free”. Then we analysed whether ecolabels were more or less effective depending on the characteristics of the shoppers themselves.

Regardless of an ecolabel’s message or format, we found that participants were more likely to choose the product with an ecolabel in 79% of experiments. We also found that ecolabels were more effective among women in 67% of studies, but found no clear difference in their effectiveness based on shopper income, age or education.

Most of the studies were hypothetical, in the sense that participants didn’t spend real money or get real food, but were asked to imagine they were shopping and to choose between products with different attributes. But in the 15 studies conducted in real-world settings, a majority (73%) found that ecolabelled products were more desirable than the alternatives.

Can this make a difference?

We were interested in how ecolabels influenced consumer behaviour. What we found suggests ecolabelling could promote more environmentally-conscious shopping. We didn’t investigate whether the various labels accurately reflected each product’s environmental impact though.

For example, while consumers tend to associate organic foods with sustainability, there is some debate around whether organic farming methods are actually better for the planet than conventional methods. For that reason, we don’t know for certain whether ecolabels always promote products with a more benign influence on the environment.

We’d also like to know more about any unintended consequences of ecolabels, such as whether they promote less healthy food and drink options. Perhaps a combined system of ecolabelling with nutritional information could remedy this, or the use of ecolabels on products meeting certain health standards.

No current labels capture a product’s full environmental impact from farm to fork. Defining the credentials a product needs in order to be awarded an ecolabel demands further study. This could have the added benefit of making these labels more credible, and improving public confidence in them.

For now, we can take comfort from the fact that an overwhelming majority of studies show ecolabelled products outperforming those without any environmental guarantees. This could show a public appetite for more sustainable lifestyles that businesses and regulators now have an opportunity to nurture.The Conversation

About The Author

Christina Potter, Health Behaviours Researcher, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

books_political

Monday, 24 July 2023 16:37

Uterine fibroids, or leiomyomas, are benign tumors commonly occurring in the uterus. They affect many women, particularly African Americans, and can lead to clinical symptoms such as abnormal...

Friday, 21 July 2023 15:37

During uncomfortably hot weather, people seek ways to cool down their homes. Air conditioners often become the default solution when temperatures rise as they provide fast and effective relief from...

Friday, 21 July 2023 14:28

  Brushing your teeth is essential for maintaining optimal oral health, but like most aspects of health, the full story is more complicated.

Friday, 21 July 2023 06:06

Are you seeking a gentle yet powerful practice that brings balance to your body and mind? Look no further than Tai Chi. 

Friday, 21 July 2023 05:40

  As the world grapples with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge of interest and concern regarding vaccines. Vaccines play a crucial role in preventing infectious diseases,...

Thursday, 20 July 2023 22:38

As the temperatures rise during the summer months, it's important to be aware of the risks associated with extreme heat.

Thursday, 20 July 2023 15:45

People who exercise only on the weekend have similar heart-health benefits as those who exercise throughout the week

Wednesday, 19 July 2023 17:42

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently reported that around one in six couples globally are affected by infertility. For many years people tended to blame women for a couple’s infertility –...

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

English Afrikaans Arabic Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Danish Dutch Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

follow InnerSelf on

facebook icontwitter iconyoutube iconinstagram iconpintrest iconrss icon

 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Saturday, 03 April 2021 08:08

Coffee, green tea and other caffeinated drinks are a popular way to start the morning. Not only does it give many people a much-needed boost, but caffeine can also help when it comes to fitness.

Wednesday, 26 July 2023 12:55

With the rising cost of living, gyms memberships and fitness classes are becoming increasingly unaffordable. But the good news is you can make just as much progress at home.

Sunday, 16 May 2021 14:24

The human body is an amazing thing, full of systems, organs, nerves, and vessels that work together in harmony. You’ve seen the body described as a machine, as a city, or even as a factory....

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 07:23

Whether it’s your arthritic relative who knows rain is on the way when their knees ache or your lifelong pal who gets a headache when a storm is approaching, we all know somebody who claims they...

Friday, 21 May 2021 10:09

The humble potato has been given a bad rap. What was once a cheap staple of many countries’ diets has instead been branded in recent years an “unhealthy” food best avoided.

Thursday, 06 May 2021 00:51

Have you ever walked into an empty room and immediately sensed that the atmosphere was laced with tension? You may have had no idea what occurred there prior to your arrival, yet you somehow knew...

New Attitudes - New Possibilities

InnerSelf.comClimateImpactNews.com | InnerPower.net
MightyNatural.com | WholisticPolitics.com | InnerSelf Market
Copyright ©1985 - 2021 InnerSelf Publications. All Rights Reserved.