In the US, retailer WalMart obliges some of its suppliers to make certain environment indicators known, and in the UK highlighting a product’s carbon usage is becoming more common via the carbon footprint scheme.
For the moment none of these schemes are mandatory, however, within the Grenelle Law for the environment, the French government would like to make the labelling of a number of environmental indicators on certain products a legal requirement from January 2011.
However, with only 11 months before companies will be asked to make certain details public relatively few appear to be aware of the work involved, according to Philippe Osset from PricewaterhouseCoopers, speaking at the PCD congress on cosmetics and perfume packaging held this week in Paris.