Plans for a new global system to measure and record the carbon footprint of beverages on their packaging labels were launched on 10 April 2008. The scheme has been developed by a partnership between NSF International, the food safety and standards accreditation organisation, and Zenith International, an international beverage industry consultancy.

It is supported by Trucost, an environmental research company. While initially being implemented for bottled water manufacturers, the scheme is expected to eventually extended to other soft drinks, before a possible roll out across the food industry. Besides carbon footprints, the scheme will aim to include a variety of additional information on their energy and packaging requirements of a specific beverage.

These include

• The amount of renewable energy and offset carbon emissions used in making the product
• The number of litres of water used to make a single litre of the beverage
• The percentage of recycled material used for a product's packaging

The CAP pilot has been undertaken by UK bottled water producer Highland Spring.

For more information see the Zenith website, the NSF website or here.

The University of East Anglia have set up a new consortium-based research project to explore the action of nitrous oxide, its role in climate change, the role of bacteria in nitrous oxide emissions and to develop techniques to mitigate its effect. The team of computer scientists, biologists, soil scientists, microbiologists, chemists and environmental scientists aims to develop a computational model of the process by which land-based bacteria produce nitrous oxide. The focus group will also concentrate on understanding the sources of this potent greenhouse gas, the chemistry and biology behind the production of nitrous oxide and its overall impact upon climate change. For more information see here.

For the past couple of years, the University of Bristol’s FRPERC (Food Refrigeration and Processing Energy Research Centre) has been working on a Defra funded project that investigates refrigeration energy use in the food supply chain and technologies that could reduce energy use. See here for details.

Recently, the project held a dissemination event that reports on its findings to date. The project website has a number of really useful ppts from this event plus other outputs. These are accessible to anyone who wants to see them but you need to get an ‘enrollment key’ to log in. To do this, contact Judith Evans at Bristol on j.a.evans@bristol.ac.uk

Tests on a tool to help policymakers assess the impact of bioenergy development on food security have begun in developing countries. The 'analytical framework', developed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), uses country data to predict the effects of bioenergy production. It will be tested on data from Peru, Tanzania and Thailand before being released to the international community.

Find out more here.

In December 2007, Gareth Thomas, UK Minister for Trade and International Development announced a new £2 million fund (the Food Retail Industry Challenge Fund), to help increase the UK market for sustainably produced food from Africa.

Announcing the funding Gareth Thomas said: “I am pleased to announce £2 million for a new Food Retail Industry Challenge Fund – the FRICH. This fund will help bring together retailers and African farmers to increase the market for sustainably produced food.”

“By purchasing Fairtrade labelled, Organic and other certified products from developing countries, people are already making a real difference to poor farmers’ lives, but we want to go further as I don’t think we can rely on labels alone. We need to trade more with the poorest countries in Africa, and we want more of this trade to be fair and ethical. This is why we are announcing the FRICH. The FRICH is designed to help African farmers come up with innovative business ideas to compete in our globalised world. We want to see new products in our shops so that many more African farmers have fairer and more profitable trading relationships with UK shoppers.”

Gareth Thomas also challenged more British firms to join the Ethical Trading Initiative which brings together businesses, trade unions and NGOs to tackle poor working conditions in developing countries some major British retailers have still not joined the initiative.

Read the press release and Gareth Thomas’ full speech here.

This project, run by the UK Government Cabinet Office Strategy Unit, is examining current and emerging trends in the production and consumption of food, the key drivers of those trends and the implications for the wider economy, society and the environment. It is looking at the opportunities and challenges facing the food system, including issues such as diet's contribution to public health, food safety, changing consumer tastes and preferences, and environmental sustainability.

The results of the first, analytical, phase of the work are provided in the discussion paper that is available for download here. Comments and contributions are welcome.

A second part, now in progress, involves consulting on the trends, the challenges the UK faces in responding to the many issues in a coherent way, and how Government can help. These consultations involve (i) NGOs covering a wide range of consumer, environmental and health issues; (ii) industry representative bodies and companies from all along the food chain; and (iii) others with an interest.

A third and final part will draw out policy implications.

The Food Stories website was produced as as a result of a four-year research project by the University of Sheffield, Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle and the British Library, and includes material from interviews with over 40 people connected with the British food industry, at all points along the supply chain, from people born in the early 20th Century to today's schoolgirls. The interviews are grouped into themes as follows:

• Food, nation and cultural identity
• Ritual and tradition
• Retail experience
• Consumer knowledge and power
• Changes in eating habits
• Food and regulation
• Technology and change

The briefing paper is available here.

Farming Futures is funded by Defra and is run by Forum for the Future on behalf of a partnership of organisations comprising the National Farmers' Union, the Country Land and Business Association, the Agricultural Industries Confederation and all of the levy boards via the Agricultural and Horticultural Research Forum. Farming Futures provides inspiration and information on the impacts of climate change and how farmers, land managers and their advisors can adapt to and mitigate these impacts. The website www.farmingfutures.org.uk features a series of sector and topic specific fact sheets. Case studies, regional maps and a series of on-farm workshops also encourage taking action to reduce cost and risk associated with climate change.

For more information on the project see the website or contact Claire Wyatt c.wyatt@forumforthefuture.org.uk or tel: 07825 204434.

• The Road Pricing Project

• CAP Reform project – which looks at how the CAP could promote sustainable food and farming
  http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/publi/capexplained/cap_en.pdf

• Comparative Merits of Consuming Vegetables Produced Locally and Overseas
• Impacts of Increasing Land Use under Energy Crops
• The Effects of Scale in Organic Agriculture

RELU also organised a series of debates on food issues for the 2006 Science Week.
Click here to see the presentations.

In particular, the group will provide robust, evidence-based advice to policy-makers in the UK and elsewhere who are seeking to understand and to influence the behaviours and practices of ‘energy consumers’.

More information...

Through CarbonLimited, the RSA is bringing together expertise from the commercial, social and financial sectors to subject these ideas to analysis and field testing and make practical policy recommendations.

The project is building up a library of useful resources, while the proceedings of its April 2006 workshop are also available online.

Individuals can contact those listed on the Experts database and add their details to it. The project also allows you to communicate with others via the forum.

a. investigate the correspondence between environmental policy intentions and the environmental values and attitudes held by households;

b. explore the resource constraints that people face when engaging in 'sustainability' promoting activities in their daily life, and how they choose to organize their activities given these constraints; and

c. use this information to clarify under what circumstances different environmental policies will be effective and perceived as legitimate.

The project focuses on four different areas of household activity: waste management activities; the active purchasing of environmentally benign products; transport choice behaviour and the use of water and sewage systems.

The SHARP approach attempts to combine in-depth interviews and time-diaries, with more extensive information about attitudes and constraints gathered via surveys from a large number of households.

The Waste Resources Action Programme has launched a major new campaign aimed at reducing food waste. Each year UK households throw away 6.7 million tonnes of food, or a third of what we buy, most of which could have been eaten. For more information see the Love Food Hate Waste campaign website.