Imagine wandering the supermarket aisles and choosing your breakfast cereal based upon how much carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas was emitted during the entire process of making and getting it there. There’d be emissions for planting the corn, tending the fields, harvesting the grain, processing the ingredients (which have their own greenhouse gas inventory), making the cereal boxes and liners, packaging the cereal, transporting the finished product, and, possibly, the emissions associated with your trip to the market. If it was a really good system, the emissions attributable would include emissions building the trucks that haul the cereal (from the tires to the asphalt roads), the clothing on the farmer’s back, the tanker that carried the oil for the plaster box-liner, the irrigation system that watered the field, and a host of other things. It might even include the emissions related to a resource economist or other researcher sitting down to figure out all these emissions. Whew!

That’s exactly what’s happening on the other side of the Atlantic. Many companies in the UK food and dry goods industries have announced that they will begin labeling the products sold in their stores so that a consumer can know a product’s “carbon footprint” or “food-miles” or any other piece of climate change-related information, then purchase accordingly.

Three of the first companies to announce such labeling were Walkers (a potato chip-maker), Boots (a UK-wide pharmacy chain), and Innocent (a natural fruit-drink maker). Walkers’s cheese and onion chips was the first product to get the carbon label—a little black and white box showing that each packet of chips was responsible for 75 grams (2.6 ounces) of carbon dioxide emissions. Boots expects to have carbon labels on its Botanics line of hair care products by July.

But bigger things are afoot. Back in January, Tesco, the UK’s biggest retailer, announced that it will introduce emission labels for every product that the chain carries—some 70,000 in all. Other UK chain stores, including Marks & Spencer, Asda, and Sainsbury’s, have likewise released schemes to label products and/or make their own operations carbon neutral. And there has been talk about carbon labels for everything from clothing to furniture.

So what’s this got to do with Alison and Zoe’s ascent and ski of Koser Gunge?

Lots.

Got any idea about how much energy it takes to forge an ice axe? Or to manufacture and assemble the parts that go into a pair of skis? Or to weave Gore-Tex? To build a mountaineering boot?

Thankfully, the outdoor industry is waking up to issues related to climate change. Throughout the 1990s, a number of outdoor gear companies switched to wind and solar power. A few years back, Black Diamond installed a 2200-watt grid-tied solar-panel system on the company’s retail store. This year, REI Adventures began buying renewable energy credits to offset the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with all the company’s trips. And recently, Pacific Outdoor Equipment developed the first carbon-neutral sleeping pad (Pacific Outdoor Equipment purchases renewable power to offset the carbon dioxide emitted during manufacturing and shipping).

But the next step, the best step, will be for outdoor gear firms (all manufacturers, really) to label just how much energy it takes and how much in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions is produced to make our gear.

Directly relating a pair of skis or an ice axe to global climate change could have an impact on our awareness and understanding of the issue. Hopefully, this is something Alison and Zoe’s adventure will address. Alison already addresses the issues in her work with her own sponsors and through her Save Our Snow and CORE initiatives. Still, maybe coming up with a carbon inventory for all their equipment is something they can do if they get caught in a storm and have to wait it out in a snow cave.