Did emissions from your lunch options enter your thinking today?
Perhaps you whittled it down to two sandwiches while eyeing up the ingredients on each, squinting your eyes and doing some quick sums š¤. An estimate on how much land and water was required for a falafel š¤Øā¦. same for the haloumi š„“ā¦ <carry the four> ā¦. āscuse me, where are these cucumbers grown?ā š§ā¦ (fuel x distance for a cucumber) š« ā¦.A quick once over on the packaging šµāš«.
Not to worry if you didnāt. Itās about to get a lot simpler.
Labels showing climate impact on food packaging could be the most transformative change in altering how we think and act around food. But the journey to get there could also be very messy.
Welcome to the Field7 newsletter.
Labels on food by 2024?
Buried among 120 recommendations in the governmentās report on reaching net zero by 2050 was an update made last month which caught the eye: every consumer product should have its carbon cost printed on the packaging.
A consultation process will come next, and a strong case for legislation is expected to follow.
By late 2024, itās very possible that everything from a tin of beans to a Michelin-starred tasting menu will come with some indication of its impact on warming the planet.
Despite the intro to this newsletter, what you opt for next time youāre at Pret isnāt the most critical element here. (I just wanted an excuse to use some of my favourite emojis). What really matters is what food businesses do next.
If the business of carbon counting is taken seriously, any credible food company will have a dashboard from which to measure, analyse and ultimately make changes which directly reduce their emissions. The success of climate food labelling rests on whether their motivations are to sincerely and meaningfully address emissions, or to just give the appearance that they are.
Somethingās brewing
The government report wasnāt the only recent development on food labelling.
Oatly last week became the first well known food company to quantify the climate impact on the side its products, first with its appallingly named but legally onside āoatgurtsā.
A groundbreaking survery on food labelling came out at the end of December from an American medical journal, revealing carbon food labelling works.
Food corps, restaurants and even head office canteens are digging into what they can do. Around nine new companies have sprouted up recently attempting to meet this demand, offering to quantify and label emissions on food. Several, however, are coming with shaky methodology behind it, leaving open problems of greenwashing and unstandardised measuring.
The company which has made the most headway in the space is Foodsteps. Its founder spoke to Field7 about a new platform it announced yesterday: a tool which lets food companies measure emissions. (See below).
INTERVIEW: āWe want to build a piece in the jigsaw that changes the food systemā
Foodsteps, is led by Anya Doherty, a food-scientist-turned-entreprepreneur.
Its thing is data. Emission calculations are at the heart of its platform which has been six years in the making. It claims to take in scopes one to three in its data and the entire food cycle of a product.
Pizza Express, Gusto, Allplants and Ask Italia are among its 50 or so clients. Doherty wants 200 by the end of this year.
Last month Foodsteps signed up Sky as a client. It analyses and labels food for Skyās 25,000 staff across the canteens in its 15 sites.
Doherty raised Ā£3.2m for Foodsteps in May last year, led by Octopus Ventures.
Dohertyās early momentum has come from the newly-hired cadre of sustainability managers in large companies. āThese are entirely new roles. People are building sustainability functions from scratch very fast and have some big goals. They need a lot of support,ā she told Field7.
For a company like Pizza Express, The Foodstepsā platform promises to quantify the emissions from growing, manufacturing and processing tinned tomatoes, for example.
Doherty wants Foodsteps to go much further than merely providing numbers. She wants Foodsteps to actively suggest intelligent changes a company can make to alter its emissions based on the analysis. Beyond that Doherty also wants Foodsteps to support how emissions are communicated by its clients through labelling.
āHow can they drive change in their supply chain if they donāt have credible numbers for their analysis?ā she added.
āIf you canāt measure it, you canāt improve it.ā (Peter Drucker)
Doherty wants more. She wants to reach a broader and deeper pool of food companies, even smaller ones, and ultimately connect directly with you and your sandwich conundrum.
The newly launched Foodsteps platform could turbo charge her ambitions. So far, Doherty and her team have been working directly with clients - a resource intensive approach. The platform give Foodsteps a hands-off method which, in theory, will allow more people to use its data and tools. āWe want to widen the net.ā
She added: āWe want to build a piece in the jigsaw that changes the food system. Our core users are food businesses but we want to communicate to the public as well.ā
The credibility problem
Four sticking points could derail carbon labelling.
The bossā backing. Does the person at the top of a food company really care? Or merely greenwashing to keep the customers/regulators/board/talent/CEOās kids happy? Doherty explained: āWeāve seen a massive difference. If leadership isnāt bought in, itās an intense uphill battle for the sustainability person and they are seen as a thorn in the side getting in the way of the finance, growth, sales teams. But with the leaderās buy-in, it can be transformative.ā
Dodgy labels. Bad practises are rife in carbon counting, perhaps a function perhaps of the cynical CEOs looking for a bit of window-dressing.
Doherty acknowledged this was a potentially dangerous issue which could sabotage the credibility of the sector: āThere are all sorts of claims being made out there, and also some weak and poor standards in some places.ā
Apples and orangesā¦ and Ramen. Unlike most forms of counting, when it comes to carbon, itās not an exact science. It brings up the problem of standardisation and comparisons. This is the one that has kept Doherty up at night. āItās a real challenge for us and in the wider industry.ā She gives the example of comparing oranges from Spain and Israel, and trying to compare relative miles travelled and how theyāre farmed. She also gives the example of an āedge caseā in the form of ramen soups. āBecause theyāre mostly water they have a low carbon intensity, despite them having meat.ā
Jolly green giants? Whatās the view inside the boardrooms of Nestle, Pepsi, General Mills, Unilever, Mondalez and Danone? These conglomerates and their peers dominate our food systems and ultimately have an enormously bearing on what the world eats. How they see climate labelling will be critical. Do they see it as a strategic opportunity, a means to get ahead of law-makers and take a leadership stance? Or a costly distraction to fob off with the bare minimum?
What can we learn from calorie labels?
Nutritional information on food packaging is a recent phenomenon. Itās only been a legal requirement in both the US and UK since the 1990s. And it was only in April last year when the UK government made it law for calorie information to be displayed on menus and food labels.
Do those numbers make sense? How useful are they anyway in joining the dots between the ingredients and the sincere intentions to lose a couple of kilos?
There is one overarching learning: accuracy is important, but clarity is too. In that momentary second when a choice is being made in a supermarket or restaurant, the connection between the ingredients and their impact needs to be clear and obvious.
(Below is how Foodsteps wants to present its information)
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Thank you,
Soheb