The Flash Eurobarometer “Europeans’ attitudes towards the issue of sustainable consumption and production” (Flash No 256) was conducted in order to examine EU citizens’ knowledge and levels of concern about sustainable consumption and production.

One detail, the survey examined, was citizens’ preference for the information provided on environmental labels – including a product’s carbon footprint.

The fieldwork for this Flash Eurobarometer was conducted between 21 and 25 April 2009. Over 26,500 randomly-selected citizens, aged 15 and over, were interviewed in the 27 EU Member States and Croatia.

Although only one-tenth of EU citizens selected the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions created by a product – i.e. the carbon footprint – as the most important piece of information on environmental labels (see section 2.2), more than 7 in 10 (72%) EU citizens thought that a label indicating a product’s carbon footprint should be mandatory in the future.

Only 15% of interviewees thought that such labelling should be voluntary and 8% said a product’s carbon footprint does not interest them. Finally, 1 in 20 respondents either had no opinion on the topic or did not know what to answer.

For download of Eurobarometer please click at the image (left).