The United Kingdom has set a national standard for carbon footprint. This new carbon audit system will measure the attempt of UK business to measure up to the institutionalized CO2 footprint standard, across their specific supply chains – in production, consumption, and disposal.

Everything but everything has a carbon footprint, so this standard applies to all products. That’s a helluva lot of products to measure. This guideline and standard can be used by both the business and public sectors to assess the greenhouse emission levels of their products and services. And since it is a standard, the measurement tools are consistent.

Measuring the carbon footprint of industries is nothing new. So, there must be a little misnomer there to say that this is a newfangled effort that has just been unveiled. The ISO Environmental Management Systems, already many years old, has been doing this for industries across the globe.

What’s new here is the fact that while the ISO14000 Series Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14000, ISO14001, and ISO 14004) that audits environment management standards is optional for companies, the new UK carbon footprint standard has hopes to be mandatory, being state-sponsored that it is.

There is also one fundamental role of a state-promoted standard. It creates wider consciousness among the citizenry. A standard that is uniformly and laterally promoted by the state renders it a quality of legal mandate. Thus, citizens are made aware that the standard is not arbitrary, but rather an imperative.

Eventually, and as a consequence, the people will want to know how much greenhouse gases have been cut by the makers of the products they patronize.

The people become the carbon footprint police, in the process.

So, when the government rubs it in, it also rubs off the consciousness among the people. All in all, a win-win situation.

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Via BBC