Carbon Footprint of Products

According to ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006, the carbon footprint of products (CFPs) is the system to calculate the category indicator of the targeted product for the global warming potential or "climate change" in life cycle assessment. There are many LCA studies focusing on greenhouse emissions. However, it is quite new to show consumers the calculation results on the shelves of supermarkets. CFP started in the UK, and many countries followed. In this chapter, the background of CFP, the aims, and the relation to type 3 label known as ISO 14025: 2006 are described in Sect. 2, followed by the general procedures of CFP and methodological issues of CFP. As the consumers can now compare CFPs directly in the store, it is needed to clarify the rules for the calculation and communication of CFP. In order to develop the internationally harmonized methodology of CFP, ISO/TS 14072 was published in 2013. In Sect. 3, the main discussion points are introduced, which were compromised when ISO/TS 14067: 2013 was published. In Sects. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, the experiences of CFP in the UK, France, Japan, Korea, and Thailand are introduced. CFP is the evaluation tool of the product focusing only on global warming, designed as "single criteria." Recently, the evaluation tool of the organization focusing on global warming has been paid attention, which is called "Organizational CFP" (ISO/TR 14069:2013). Moreover, the tools to evaluate more environmental categories than only global warming of the product and/or the organization are called "multicriteria." In this chapter, the current status of CFP in the world is overviewed, and the outlook of CFP in the future is discussed. One of the reasons why CFP obtained such high attention in the society is that the consumers can see and compare CFPs directly in the store. CFP is expected to be a communication tool between producers and consumers. This is true in the present and will be true in the future.