According to online news, FødevareFokus, Salling Group, Denmark’s largest retailing group, believe that it is urgent to have a climate label and has taken the initiative to transform the recommendations from the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration’s working group into a specific label that should make it easier for Danes to shop with consideration for the climate.
At this year’s Folkemøde (ed: Denmark’s Annual Democracy Festival held on15-17 June in Allinge, Bornholm), Salling Group, has therefore presented a bid for how Denmark’s future climate label can look and be used in the grocery stores and as the first grocery retail, Salling Group has launched the climate label for goods in their Netto store in Allinge, Bornholm.
The label is a scale label with a clear colour scale that makes it easy to decode whether the product has a high or low CO2 footprint. At the same time, the label indicates the calculated CO2 footprint of the individual product. The label thus leans on the recommendation that the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration’s working group for a national climate label has recommended to the Minister of Food and Agriculture to take into use.
The grocery group has no doubt that a brand that can make it easier for Danes to put CO2e reductions at the top of the shopping list is needed.
According to commercial Director of Salling Group’s Netto grocery store, Martin Hasgard, many Danes would like to shop more climate-friendly but it can be difficult to think about the climate footprint of a shopping basket in a busy everyday life.
Martin Hasgard is also an active member of the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration’s working group, which recently submitted its recommendations for a national climate label. At the same time, he is the main architect behind Netto’s own climate brand Skyen, which was tested with great success, but taken off the shelves to make way for a common, national brand.
He believes that it is not appropriate for each group or manufacturer to develop its own brand stating:
“Both customers and the climate are best helped with one common climate label, which, like the eco-label, is the same for everyone and easy to navigate. The Danes already have to deal with a multitude of brands, and if we want to advance the climate agenda – and we want to – then a brand like this is needed.”
“We hope that with the brand we can inspire customers to, for example, make the bolognese a little greener or perhaps open their eyes to completely new tastes, ingredients and ideas, and thereby just as quietly change habits.”
Source: Fødevarefokus
Facts and Outlook
As the first country in the world, Denmark set up a working group consisting of representatives from the retail industry, the food industry and consumer organisations to develop a state-controlled climate label that ensure one common climate label which consumers can trust and which the retail trade and the food industry will broadly use.The work was completed on 27 April 2023 with recommendations of a scale model (traffic light model) that can be used for all foods and which shows how harmful the individual product is to the climate.The climate label should not be expected to appear on goods in Denmark for the next few years as further work on the working group’s recommendations as well as process and implementation period should be taken into account. The Danish climate label will initially not be made mandatory, as the regulation of food labelling is harmonized by the EU.
Denmark currently has currently 5 official food labelsThe Ø label – the Danish organic label
The keyhole label
The whole grain label
Better animal welfare
Nature-friendlySource: The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries
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