Carbon footprints[精].docVIP

Carbon footprints 碳足迹 Following the footprints 追寻碳足迹 Environment: Carbon-footprint labels, which indicate a product’s environmental impact, are quietly spreading. Consumers may not have noticed them yet, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes 环境：用以表明一个产品的环境影响的碳足迹标签，正悄悄流行起来。也许仍未引起消费者的注意，但已有诸多事情发生在在公众视线之外Jun 2nd 2011 | from the print edition DO YOU look for carbon-footprint labels on goods when shopping? If you do, you are in a small minority. The practice of adding labels to foods and other products, showing the quantity (in grams) of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with making and transporting them, began in 2007 when the world’s first such labels were applied to a handful of products sold in Britain. The idea was that carbon labels would let shoppers identify products with the smallest carbon footprints, just as other labels already indicate dolphin-friendly tuna, organic milk or Fairtrade coffee. Producers would compete to reduce the carbon footprints of their products, and consumers would be able to tell whether, for example, locally made goods really were greener than imported ones. 在购物时你会查看产品的碳足迹标签吗？少数人会这么做，如果你会，你当属其中一员。对食物和其他产品加上这个标签来说明在制作和运输过程中的二氧化碳排放量（以克为计算单位），这个做法始于2007年，当时世界上第一种类似的标签应用于英国的一小部分产品。这个想法是，碳标签能让购物者识别出含有最少碳足迹的产品，这类似于其他种标签的用法，比如未危及海豚Carbon labels have yet to become as widely recognised by consumers as other eco-labels, however. A survey carried out in 2010 by Which?, a British consumer group, found that just a fifth of British shoppers recognised the carbon footprint label, compared with recognition rates of 82% for Fairtrade and 54% for organic labelling. This is understandable, because carbon labelling is a much more recent development—organic labelling dates back to the 1970s, and Fairtrade to the late 1980s—and the right ways to do it are still being worked out. Adding a carbon label to a product is a complex and often costly process that involves tracing its ingredients back up their respective supply chains and through their