Tesco’s detergents: cleaning up the carbon footprint

Overview

Towards the end of 2007 Tesco agreed to work with the Carbon Trust to assess the carbon footprint of 20 products. Among them were potatoes, light bulbs, orange juice and laundry detergent. 

Through studies and comparisons of their own laundry detergent products Tesco’s made some interesting insights. They found that concentrated liquid detergent had a smaller carbon footprint than washing powder or tablets, based largely on the manufacturing stage in the life-cycle.

Concentrated detergents use less of some ingredients and less packaging; this gives them a smaller footprint than their diluted equivalent. Ingredient choice also makes a difference: the materials used in concentrated liquid detergent are less carbon intensive than those used in tablets or powder.

However, the vast majority of carbon emissions of laundry detergent arises from the electricity and water consumed during the use phase. So this too had to be factored in. Working together with the Carbon Trust, Tesco not only provided information on their own products’ footprint, they also made suggestions as to how customers could lower their own footprint – for example: “Washing at 30 C rather than 40 C saves 160g Co2 per wash.”  

What's next for Tesco?

The next steps for Tesco are to understand the consumer impact of 20 of their products that have already been awarded a Carbon Reduction Label and to footprint and label a further set of Tesco products.

Carbon footprint breakdown

To secure the Carbon Reduction Label, Tesco’s own laundry detergent’s total carbon footprint from its materials and manufacture, transport, in-use and end of life were measured. The example below shows the carbon breakdown for Tesco's non-biological liquid capsule which we found had a footprint of 700g per wash

How this is broken down:

Raw Materials	Manufacturing	Packaging	Distribution & Store	Use & Disposal
17%	-	-	1.2%	82%