New Product Labels

New product labels that indicate a products environmental impact may be hitting supermarket shelves. Last year U.K. retailer Tesco announced product labels that document the carbon footprint of a product. Apparently Canadian grocery retailer Loblaw's is considering a similar program for the private label products it sells. The labels will resemble nutritional information labels and have carbon footprint data.

The shoe footwear and apparel maker Timberland is looking at going one step further by establishing a standard in their industry to have labels contain more information such as the chemicals used, recycled content, resources used and carbon offset data for their products.

I think this initiative is a good idea in making people aware. However, unless practices are changed nobody will really pay attention. Even food that is not that good for you has nutritional information labels but that doesn't stop people from buying it or companies from making it.

Eco-friendly Fashion

Old clothing that is too worn out and cannot be donated likely ends up in the landfill. Many other fabrics suffer the same fate. Mined Recreations uses recycled fabrics to make useful items like handbags. Precocious does the same but designs many other clothing items.

A lot of fabrics end up in the landfill and now that a lot companies used more synthetic fabrics and special coatings, like those for stain resistance, the environmental impact is greater than ever. This type of recycling and reusing may not close the loop entirely but it does help.