Seeing Green At the Supermarket

da Maud Largeaud , AdForum

You know the feeling: you want to shop with an eye on the environment, but when you go to the supermarket the labels don’t give any indication of the product’s impact on the planet. So here’s a bright idea from Swedish supermarket Felix – you can trust Scandinavians to be ahead in the sustainability stakes – and the agency Prime Weber Shandwick. Instead of changing the label, they hacked something even more vital: the price. In a pop-up store, goods were marked up not with Swedish crowns, but with their “cost” in Co2 emissions, including production, preparation and transport. The store even created a special currency and gave shoppers a weekly Co2 allowance of 18.9kg, so they could visualise the real impact of their purchases on the environment. But the real purpose of this one-off store? To draw media attention to the issue, for sure – but also to promote the fact that, from now on, Felix will label all its products with their environmental impact. So shoppers may think twice before buying that can of tuna.