Can climate-friendly food labels transform eaters into environmentalists?

For the average consumer, that information can be hard to come by, or confusing, or both. Agriculture, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), contributes 11 percent of greenhouse gases (GHG) to climate warming. The sector’s heavy reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and livestock production, particularly cattle, releases vast amounts of nitrous oxide and methane — both potent greenhouse gases — into the atmosphere. Packaging and processing further adds to food’s climate impact — accounting for more than 20 percent of GHGs globally. Ironically, consumers mistakenly peg transportation as the largest contributor to the climate footprint of food, when in reality it’s only responsible for 6 percent of emissions. When the idea of carbon labeling food was first introduced to North America half a decade ago, it was touted as an inspiring — and clear — way for consumers to cut through the noise and easily make climate-conscious food choices. However, progress on the mainstream implementation of the labels has been slow and reaction as to their effectiveness has, at times, been mixed.

What’s the latest with climate-friendly food labeling?

Since 2020, the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global nonprofit organization with a mission to “move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment,” has used the “Cool Food Meals” certification and badge.

As Anne Bordier, WRI’s food initiatives director, explains: “The Cool Food initiative is designed to leverage the vast consumer reach of food service providers and restaurants to make it easier for diners to eat climate-friendly, plant-rich dishes.” According to Bordier, meals that meet WRI’s thresholds have 38 percent less carbon content than the average meal in North America. This is calculated on per-meal GHG emissions as derived from recipe data submitted to WRI. Since the program’s inception, 6,000 meals have been certified by WRI and stamped with the green, white and black labeling denoting them as low-carbon Cool Food Meals.

Aramark, a leader in food service catering for universities and hospitals, voluntarily adopted the Cool Food Meals label in January 2021 as part of its commitment to sustainability and climate-conscious dining. Ash Hanson, Aramark’s chief diversity and sustainability officer at the time, said in a WRI press release: “Our plant-forward menu options not only meet consumer tastes but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions, minimize demand for water and land resources, and preserve natural habitats.”

Using WRI’s Cool Food Calculator, the University of British Columbia (UBC) has also embraced sustainability. One of the oldest universities in Canada, UBC hopes to reduce food-related emissions on campus by 50 percent by 2030. The project is spearheaded by SEEDS Sustainability Program, which catalyses student-led research, in partnership with UBC Food Services, UBC’s Climate-Friendly Food System Action Team and academic faculties including economics department members. Their mission: to develop a labeling system for menu items offered in student dining halls and cafeterias throughout campus. A series of three Earth icons appear at the bottom of a menu listing in three different colors: red, yellow and green. If the green icon is the largest displayed of the three, it means that item has used less water, land and nitrogen — thereby generating fewer GHG emissions. More than 1,300 menu items have been assessed and carry the labels.

It is still too early to know if the labeling scheme will be successful in reaching UBC’s 2030 target. However, an April 2024 report analyzing the program has indicated that the labels have generally led to better decision-making in food procurement and sustainability practices on campus.

Helpful signage or another form of greenwashing?

More and more companies have adopted a cool-food attitude as well. Just Salad was the first U.S. restaurant chain to carbon-label its offerings. Their labels reflect the full life-cycle GHG emissions of a meal, from production to disposal. They also display a plant-based “Earth-Friendly menu board” so customers can choose from a selection of salads with lower emissions. Those labels seem to have made a difference. As Nick Kenner, Just Salad’s CEO and founder told Forbes Magazine in 2023, “Following the launch of our Climatarian filter, we saw a nearly 10 percent increase in sales of Climatarian menu items.”

This syncs with the findings of a 2022 study that asked more than 5,000 participants to select a hypothetical meal from a fast food menu. Some menu items had no labels. Others, containing red meat, featured high-climate impact labels, while fish, chicken and meatless dishes were marked low-climate impact.

“We found that both climate impact labels prompted more sustainable choices, and the high-climate impact label was the most effective,” says Julia Wolfson, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the study’s lead author.

While this data points to positive outcomes, there is some trepidation that climate labels may have a greenwashing effect. At the Better Food Foundation (BFF), the vision is to create a world in which plant-based food is the norm. Although climate labels are a step in that direction, BFF’s senior director of campaigns, Laura Lee Cascada, feels they may not go far enough.

Through programs such as BFF’s DefaultVeg, restaurants and cafes are encouraged to place Cool Foods as the first choice on a menu. This simple strategy is rooted in the concept of  “nudges,” a behavioral science approach popularized by Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein. It posits that humans generally prefer to go with the flow, choosing options that require less effort, time or money. So, for example, if a vegetarian sandwich replaces a chicken burger at the top of a menu, diners are more likely to select that sandwich as their default choice.

“Carbon labeling,” Cascada says, “is a type of nudge.” However, she is cautious about what the labels represent. “One of the things we have flagged with carbon labeling is that because it may only focus on the carbon footprint and not any of the other environmental factors, it can lead to an uptake of fish and chicken. Chicken,” says Cascada, “has a carbon footprint 11 times that of lentils.” Chicken farming may only contribute 0.6 percent of U.S. emissions, but its environmental impacts, including the nitrous oxide and ammonia found in chicken manure, also exacerbate climate change.

What is the future of climate labeling?

As it turns out, climate labeling of food has grabbed the attention of lawmakers. In 2024, Congressman Sean Casten and Congresswoman Julia Brownley introduced the Voluntary Food Climate Labeling Act. The legislation proposed a volunteer labeling system that would be developed by the EPA to reflect a product’s carbon footprint — from GHG emissions during production and manufacturing to the environmental costs of distribution, consumer use and eventual disposal or recycling.

As the 118th Congress concluded in January 2025, and a new administration took over, the bill had not reached the Congressional Chamber for a vote and was, as is tradition, swept off the books. What’s more, the new administration is hostile to environmental initiatives. Such legislation, if enacted, would be difficult to implement given that the EPA and other guideline-setting agencies will likely be hindered from doing their jobs. The administration also made it clear in January 2025 that the U.S. intends to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement — thereby abandoning its mandate to curb GHG emissions and slow the rise of planetary temperatures. Additionally, the USDA website (although still active) was recently scrubbed, suggesting the administration objects to connecting the dots between the food system and climate change. This new reality means that U.S. shoppers are unlikely to see grocery store shelves stocked with climate-labeled products anytime soon.

The good news is that there is an app for that! The Swedish company CarbonCloud has designed a web-based tool to help the climate-conscious shopper better understand the carbon impact of food. Users can register for free through a laptop or smartphone to access the company’s ClimateHub. Once there, the tool’s searchable database lists the Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO2e) of more than 10,000 products, analyzing each one’s agricultural, processing, packaging and transportation outputs.

And while widespread climate labeling may be wishful thinking for now, regenerative food labels have offered a reasonable comparison since 2017. The Regenerative Organic Certification, for example, is an additional certification on top of organic; it is designed to let the consumer know that the food is sourced (or uses ingredients) from a farm utilizing regenerative agriculture practices (which, broadly speaking, aim to improve soil health and protect the environment). The certification has its limitations at the market, though: Not everyone has heard of regenerative farming, so the language often falls flat. What is more widely understood is climate change — which is why the widespread use of climate labeling could have a significant impact.

Consider the nutrition label: There once was a time when the nutritional labeling of food was considered far-fetched — yet its adoption changed the entire food system. “We rightly think about the impact of climate labels on consumer choice,” says Bordier. “But it’s worth also thinking about the impact they can have upstream on the supply chain. Nutritional labeling provides an interesting comparison in this respect.”