Carbon Trust to design eco-labelling scheme for Mexico

The Carbon Trust has been selected to develop an environmental labelling scheme for products and services in Mexico. The scheme will be designed to promote sustainable purchasing and procurement for consumers, companies and the public sector.

To deliver the scheme the Carbon Trust will be working with SEMARNAT, the Mexican government’s secretariat of the environment and natural resources, as well as representatives from small, medium and large Mexican businesses, NGOs and the public sector.

The Carbon Trust will develop a methodological framework to quantify the carbon footprint of Mexican products and services, along with a mechanism for certification and labelling which meets the needs of Mexico.
Once this has been completed SEMARNAT and Carbon Trust have committed to seek funding for subsequent phases of this project. This will involve a pilot phase of the scheme to evaluate how it works in practice, which will be followed by a wider roll out.

Martin Barrow, head of footprinting at the Carbon Trust, said: “We need to be realistic, and remain aware that we need to make this work against a backdrop that many companies and individuals do not see this as a priority right now. For this scheme to succeed it will need to work for businesses right now, by providing value through footprinting as well as labelling.”

“We plan to build a scheme where the business value exceeds the cost of participating for as many companies and as many products as possible. So that smaller companies can benefit we will look into the provision of a simpler common infrastructure tailored to individual sectors.”