The Carbon Trust
Project title: Raising awareness of carbon issues
The brief
The Carbon Trust is charged with reducing the UK’s carbon emissions by working with businesses and consumers. To raise awareness of carbon emissions they decided to create an identity that could quickly and concisely indicate the carbon load used in the production of a product, in a way that will be meaningful to consumers and will stand out in a busy, on-pack environment.
Brand Faith was commissioned to design the carbon label - www.carbon-label.co.uk. This will serve two roles; firstly, to indicate to consumers the quantified carbon load of a product from source to shelf and, secondly, to indicate that the company behind the product is actively working with the Trust to reduce carbon emissions.
The solution
As the Carbon Trust had already secured key business partners (Innocent Drinks, Pepsi, Walkers, Boots and L’Oreal) to champion the launch of the label, our design work and customer research had to be completed within an eight week time frame.
The first activity was to undertake a review of carbon footprint labels and marques currently in sue across the world. Having completed this, we set to work on the design concepts for the label. In parallel with the creative process, we designed and facilitated a business-business and consumer research study, exploring attitudes to carbon management and overall environmental practice.
These interviews and groups enabled us to validate our design ideas and to explore the opportunities for the label to evole in the medium term. These were presented to the Carbon Trust team alongside our final creative concepts so as to demonstrate how the Label identity could be expanded to meet the needs of both consumers and businesses.
The results
The label was launched through a national press campaign in March 2007, and is fast becoming a recognised symbol in the carbon management landscape. Since the launch 10 more retail business partners have been secured and have committed to carrying the label on all own label products. Find out more at www.carbon-label.co.uk.