Pepsi, Tropicanahttps://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/business/22pepsi.html
BRADENTON, Fla. — How much does your morning glass of orange juice contribute to global warming?
PepsiCo,which owns the Tropicana brand, decided to try to answer that question.It figured that as public concern grows about the fate of the planet,companies will find themselves under pressure to perform suchcalculations. Orange juice seemed like a good case study.
PepsiCohired experts to do the math, measuring the emissions from suchenergy-intensive tasks as running a factory and transporting heavyjuice cartons. But it turned out that the biggest single source ofemissions was simply growing oranges. Citrus groves use a lot ofnitrogen fertilizer, which requires natural gas to make and can turninto a potent greenhouse gas when it is spread on fields.
PepsiCofinally came up with a number: the equivalent of 3.75 pounds of carbondioxide are emitted to the atmosphere for each half-gallon carton oforange juice. But the company is still debating how to use thatinformation. Should it cite the number in its marketing, and wouldconsumers have a clue what to make of it?
PepsiCo’s experienceis a harbinger of the complexities other companies may face as theycome under pressure to calculate their emission of carbon dioxide, anumber known as a carbon footprint, and eventually to lower it.
“Themain thing is helping us figure out where the carbon is in the chain,”said Neil Campbell, president of Tropicana North America, a division ofPepsiCo. While acknowledging that protocols for measuring greenhouseemissions are far from perfect, Mr. Campbell said, “you can end updoing nothing if you let that stop you.”
PepsiCo, a manufacturerof soda, salty snacks and cereal based in Purchase, N.Y., is among agrowing number of companies that hope to get ahead of potentialgovernment mandates and curb their energy use as prices and long-termsupply grow less certain.
They also want to promote supposedlylow-carbon products to consumers anxious about rising globaltemperatures; such labeling has already appeared in Europe.
The list of companies that have taken steps to reduce carbon emissions includes I.B.M., Nike, Coca-Cola and BP, the oil giant. Google, Yahoo and Dell are among the companies that have vowed to become “carbon neutral.”
PepsiCois among the first that will provide consumers with an absolute numberfor a product’s carbon footprint, which many expect to be a trend. Theinformation will be posted on Tropicana’s Web site. The company has notyet decided if it will eventually put it on the package.
Whilecarbon reduction efforts are generally welcomed by environmentalists,some complain that the marketing claims are backed by fuzzy numbers anddubious assumptions.
Standards exist for determining a carbonfootprint, but companies can apply them in different ways. They candecide how rigorous they want to be in counting emissions in the supplychain, and what data sources they should use in the process.
“Anytime people are making a legitimate effort to reduce emissions directlyor indirectly with their product and services, most of us would thinkthat is a good thing,” said Michael Gillenwater, dean of the GreenhouseGas Management Institute, a nonprofit organization that teachesgreenhouse gas management and accounting.
“The trick is when youtry to put a strict label that has implications for comparing yourproduct to another product, or implying that you have no climate changeimpact,” he said.
Nancy Hirshberg, vice president for naturalresources at the yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, said measuring a carbonfootprint is a “fabulous tool” for pinpointing areas to reduceemissions. For instance, her company was surprised to learn that milkproduction was a far bigger contributor to greenhouse gas emissionsthan its factory.
But she said there were so many variables indetermining a carbon footprint that an absolute number was meaninglessas a marketing tool.
“I’m thrilled that people are thinkingabout their carbon footprint, but to put a number on a package ismisleading at best,” she said.
PepsiCo’s interest in determiningthe carbon footprint of its products began in England, where carbonanxiety is further advanced than in the United States. In 2007,Walkers, a PepsiCo brand, published the carbon footprint of its potatochips on its Web site and on the package.
Mr. Campbell, who ranthe Walkers brand, championed the idea when he came to Tropicana at thebeginning of 2008. As was the case with Walkers, Tropicana hired anoutside auditor, the Carbon Trust, to review its calculations andcertify its footprint. The Carbon Trust was set up by the Britishgovernment to accelerate progress toward a low-carbon economy.
Making orange juice is relatively straightforward: the oranges arepicked by hand, trucked to the plant, squeezed, pasteurized and packedinto cartons and shipped by train to distribution points around thecountry. Early on, company officials roughed out the carbon footprintof Tropicana juice. But when the Carbon Trust came back with its owncalculations, that initial estimate was off by more than 20 percent.
Growing the oranges accounted for a larger share — about a third — thanPepsiCo had expected, almost entirely because of the production andapplication of fertilizer.
Now, PepsiCo managers said they planned to work with their growers and with researchers at the University of Floridato find ways to grow oranges using less carbon. And they are startingto grapple with ways to teach the public how to interpret the carbonfootprint of a product.
PepsiCo is scheduled to announce itsTropicana results on Thursday, and will publish carbon-footprintnumbers for products including Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Gatorade. SaidBryan Lembke, a PepsiCo manager on the project: “If you don’t measureit, you can’t improve it.”