A carbon traffic-light label for food Current

A proposal for a voluntary, Nutri-Grade-style carbon label for packaged food sold in Singapore. Each product would receive a colour-coded grade from A to E, based on its cradle-to-gate carbon footprint per kilogram relative to the median of comparable products in its category. The proposal sets out a three-wave rollout: a controlled pilot with a willing retailer, a gradual voluntary rollout across product categories, and a community-wide system whose effects can be measured. The full proposal follows.

Abstract

Food carbon footprints are largely not disclosed to consumers at the point of purchase, leaving both the public with an inability to gauge the climate impact of the products they purchase and the manufacturers with no consumer-facing incentive to reduce it. To reduce this information asymmetry, this paper proposes a voluntary carbon traffic-light label for packaged foods sold in Singapore, modelled after the Health Promotion Board’s (HPB) Nutri-Grade scheme and graded according to a product’s carbon footprint relative to the median in its respective category. Evidence from Nutri-Grade, where median sugar levels of pre-packaged beverages declined from 7.1% in 2017 to 4.6% in 2023 and prompted manufacturers to reformulate their products,¹ alongside the United Kingdom’s Foundation Earth pilot in 2021, which displayed the technical feasibility of carbon footprint labelling at a supermarket scale, supports the practicality of such a scheme in Singapore.² This paper examines the feasibility of establishing a carbon footprint traffic-light labelling while attaining guidance and institutional support to develop a worked prototype that would potentially be used in (1) a piloting programme, followed by (2) an initial and gradual voluntary implementation across products, and finally (3) a community-wide system whose socioeconomic and environmental benefits can be assessed.

The Issue

The carbon emissions embedded within a respective food’s production remain ambiguous to consumers at the point of purchase. Consumers choosing between two products are not able to compare their climate impact; at the same time, manufacturers are not held accountable regardless of their scale of sustainability practices. This gap is particularly consequential for Singapore, as more than 90% of its food is imported; under the Singapore Green Plan 2030, they have committed to reducing their environmental footprint.³ In a 2024 survey assessed by Singlife, 70% of Singaporeans have emphasised their concern for sustainability, yet only 30% felt confident in addressing it and making climate-conscious choices largely for want of accessible, trustworthy product information.⁴ While nutritional grading exists, no standardised carbon label for food has taken effect - though a national product-level carbon footprint certification ecosystem, led by the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) with Singapore Polytechnic and the carbon-accounting firm Zevero, is being developed to support precisely such a label.⁵

The Proposal

This paper proposes a carbon traffic-light label for food products that will operate in three waves. Each product would carry a five-level grade (A-E), colour-coded from green to red, determined by its carbon footprint relative to the median of comparable products in the same category, expressed per kilogram and calculated on a cradle-to-gate basis through the usage of published life-cycle assessment (LCA) data and potentially Zevero. Because the certification backbone is already emerging through the SEC-Zevero initiative as well as NUS’s campus-menu initiative, this proposal contributes to the consumer-facing interpretation (colour-coded traffic-light labelling) and the prospective process for introducing it more broadly across Singapore, pairing with a scannable code linking to a product’s footprint as Zevero has done so for NUS’s carbon-labelled menus.⁶

The first wave is a controlled pilot with a willing retailer, candidates including Scoop Wholefoods & Unpackt, and SaladStop!. Data will be gathered over a time period for assessment. The second wave will begin with a voluntary and gradual roll-out across product categories. The third being a community-wide system whose larger-scale effects can be measured. It has also been determined by Laura Arrazat et al. that five-level scales, following the colour-coded logic of Nutri-Grade, have significantly reduced the environmental impact of shoppers’ choices at no nutritional, financial, or hedonic cost.⁷ In addition, Foundation Earth’s later merger into EIT Food elaborates on the principal drawback to such labelling, which is in large part a result of the proliferation of competing schemes rather than facing technical infeasibility: Singapore’s comparatively uncluttered labelling landscape, coordinated through a single emerging framework, positions it well to avoid such drawbacks. Should the first wave prove effective, this scheme could be relayed to the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment, along with the Health Promotion Board and the SEC, to inform a broader and eventually mandatory implementation of its use.