That’s how much some Swedes are finding out a hamburger contributes to their carbon footprint.

Yesterday, the NY Times ran a story highlighting new Swedish dietary guidelines—in this case, labels on food products showing consumers how much carbon is emitted in the production of these items.

It’s an interesting idea on many levels:

• It deals with the chronic problem of environmental illiteracy.
• It makes the idea of carbon emissions real and personal rather than some ethereal, abstract idea.
• It makes information readily available in a useful form that can influence consumer choice (e.g., folks can compare two items side-by-side to see which has a lower footprint).
• These labels could possibly drive producers and supermarkets to respond more to consumer demand.
• And when big retailers get on board, large ripple effects can happen.  Walmart is about to roll these labels out as well.  As Walmart goes, so goes the world’s biggest supply chain.  That’s good news.

However, it’s also interesting to see the range of responses among consumers–and not all of it’s positive.  An analysis of these labels is an environmental psychology PhD dissertation waiting to happen.

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/su-lin/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0