June 16, 2008 - French supermarket chain Casino has launched color-coded carbon labels for some of its own-brand products, Food Production Daily reports.

Casino's new labeling scheme is backed in part by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency. The European Parliament has come out in favor of finding new ways to educate consumers on the environmental impacts of the products they buy.

Casino's new labels use various colors to indicate the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from packaging manufacture and product transport.

U.K. retailer Tesco kicked off a similar scheme in April, testing carbon labels on 20 of its private-label products.

Casino says it plans to roll out the new labels on all 3,000 of its own-brand products by the end of the year.