A new app designed to help consumers make more informed choices about the environmental impact of their weekly food shop has hit the market.
The app, called Sustained Choice, allows shoppers to scan the barcode on their groceries and make more conscious shopping choices based on the data provided.
The platform offers information about how any given product performs in seven key areas of environmental impact, including land and water use, GHG emissions and ocean pollution.
It then rates the product on a scale of A to G (with A being most eco-friendly, and G being most impactful on the environment).
Co-founder Carl Olivier, who has worked for big tech companies such as Skype, Microsoft and Twilio, said Sustained not only empowers people “to make better choices when it comes to the food they buy” but also encourages businesses and brands “to be open and transparent about the sustainable changes they are making”.
“Sustainability is at its most valuable when it is visible, and our app puts that visibility directly into the hands of the consumer,” he said. “Our mission is to make the full story of food more accessible, and it’s incredibly encouraging to see that chime with so many people.”
The app, which officially launched last month, is fast approaching over 1,000 active users. It supports most UK grocery retail products, with more than 194,000 products in its database.
Olivier said the app helps combat greenwashing in the sense that it helps shoppers make choices based on “evidence, science-based information that was translated and made accessible to people” rather than on marketing tactics.
The algorithm used for assessing a product’s environmental impact runs on evidence around ingredients, production cycle and packaging processes that is publicly available – similar to the life cycle assessment methodology used by other schemes such as Eco-Score.
Olivier said he is also looking into adding additional information to the product description, such as country of origin, to help users make more informed decisions.
“Most of the other eco-labelling initiatives that are on trial at the moment are all of a smaller scale and focused on displaying the label on the packaging. Where we think we’re going to differentiate is that we can also take the distribution side to consumers and make that at a much broader scale.”
He added Sustained is able to then work with retailers and delivery services to integrate its model with their own.
“We are able to match the scientific rigour of other eco-labelling initiatives, and we are able to do it at scale both on the assessment side and on how consumers can interact and use this in their day-to-day shopping.”
The company is in talks to get more accurate information directly from brands to improve its database, as well as to expand its technology’s reach within grocery.
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