Tesco drops carbon-label pledge

Tesco has dropped plans to work with the Carbon Trust to label all its 70,000 products with their carbon footprint. In January 2007, Tesco's chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, had promised 'a revolution in green consumption' as the company pledged to catalogue emissions and put carbon labels on all 70,000 products. But the supermarket has now said it is ditching the scheme and phasing out existing labels after other supermarkets failed to follow suit. The work load involved had been taxing - calculating the footprint of each product had been taking several month's work and the supermarket had previously only been adding products at the rate of about 125 a year. The decision will come as a blow to the Carbon Trust. It has previously been a government funded body, but following coalition cuts from April 2012 it will rely solely on private funding from its work with businesses.