Sweet and carbon-free

You can get sugar-free carbonated beverages, and now you can get carbon-free sugar.

Florida Crystals announced Tuesday that it will offer sweeteners made without greenhouse gas emissions. The West Palm Beach company makes power from sugar waste to manufacture its sweeteners, and claims that the use of renewable fuels to make the sweetener makes its organic sugar carbon-free.

The greenhouse gas impact was certified by Carbonfund.org, a Maryland non-profit. The group claimed that it awarded the carbon-free certification after rigorous life-cycle analysis performed by the Edinburgh Center for Carbon Management, based in Scotland. The analysis took into account everything from farming, processing, packaging and delivery stores.

“CarbonFree certification and labeling is the next big trend in environmentally responsible living,” said Eric Carlson, executive director of Carbonfund.org, in a press release.

-Asjylyn Loder, Times Staff Writer

Comments

[Tino]

"CarbonFree certification and labeling is the next big trend in environmentally responsible living."

Sure, that sounds great in theory, but do we really know how much people are willing to spend for feeling good?

A recent posting here, "Sunshine State Loves Solar", indicated that consumers MIGHT want to pay an extra 1% on their electric bill to add 0.1% of additional solar capacity in the state.

Obviously, these numbers do not extrapolate. In light of rising commodity and other prices, are consumers willing to pay X percent more for everything if it is "certified"?

I think that X is a lot lower than the special interest groups indicate with their biased "surveys".