It’s lunchtime and employees returning to work after months away during the coronavirus pandemic are noticing something has changed. Next to the sandwiches and hot and cold dishes is a small globe symbol, coloured green, orange or red with a letter in the centre from A to E. “Meet our new eco-labels”, a sign reads. Researchers at Oxford University have analysed the ingredients in every food item on the menu and given the dishes an environmental impact score, vegetable soup (an A) to the lemon, spring onion, cheese and tuna bagel (an E).
The UK division of the food services business Compass Group has teamed up with the university for a trial at more than a dozen of its cafeterias across the UK to see if a label can change the way people eat. Getting people to switch to environmentally sustainable food options through labels is not new: hundreds of food labels exist, from ones that certify organic, to those that promise sustainable fishing. But a new type is gaining steam, one that summarises multiple environmental indicators from greenhouse gas emissions to water use into a single letter indicating the product’s impact.
Some businesses in France began using one this year and the NGO Foundation Earth announced its own trial to begin in UK and EU supermarkets this autumn. The first challenge for the scientists designing the trial is the image the diners see on the signs. How much information do you include in a label? How do you strike a balance between effective and practical?
During the pandemic, researchers ran studies on an online supermarket where people were given fake money to complete their fake shopping list. The trial gave a sense of what labels were more likely to sway people to buy eco-friendly. They found the most effective way to get people to not buy an item was to use a dark red globe symbol with the word “worse” printed on it. But while effective, it had real world limitations.
“You’re not going to be able to get anyone to use that unless you threaten them with legislation, because they don’t want to say ‘don’t buy this’,” said Brian Cook, the senior researcher at Oxford’s Leap programme leading the project. And what works for this cafeteria setting, with lots of room for information on walls and beside the food, may not work on food packaging in a supermarket that’s already full of information, much of it government mandated. “The real estate there is highly competitive,” Cook said.
The scientists had to create a formula to determine environmental impact – a process full of tough decisions using imperfect data. “There’s never ending ways you can do it and how you weight the different indicators … how you want to nudge people,” Cook said. This research team decided on four indicators for this trial’s formula: greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, water pollution, and water use (calculated differently based on water scarcity in each region). They weighted each indicator equally in their equation for overall impact. Other research has looked at land use instead of biodiversity, or using a total of 16 indicators. Whatever the choice, it can change the eco-score that comes out.
Foundation Earth Pilots
Foundation Earth is determined not to let the pursuit of perfection be the enemy of doing what is possible. While an intensive research and development programme gets underway to produce an optimum scoring system for 2022, they have launched a pilot programme to test consumer response to front-of-pack environmental scores. This programme allows the Foundation and its partners to assess how each method performs and how consumers respond to the labels, as it sets about developing an optimum scoring system and label for full roll-out in 2022.
PILOT ONE
This pilot will use a farm to shelf method, born out of research from an academic paper by Poore & Nemecek (2018). It assesses a food product’s environmental impact through four key criteria: water usage, water pollution, biodiversity and carbon. In the simplest terms, they gather information about the product, conduct a ‘Life Cycle Assessment’ to put numbers to the impacts and finally award the score you see on our front-of pack-labels. This method assesses a product’s environmental impact by assessing the farming, processing, packaging and transport. The impacts are weighted 49% to carbon and 17% each for water usage, water pollution and biodiversity loss.
PILOT TWO
Their second pilot is using a farm to fork method. The system produces an easy to understand label to communicate the environmental impact of food & beverage products based on the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) European Methodology developed by DG Environment (Com 2013/179/EU).
PEF takes 16 categories into account: Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, Ionising Radiation (HH), Photochemical Ozone Formation (HH), Respiratory Inorganics, Non-cancer Human Health Effects, Cancer Human Health Effects, Acidification Terrestrial and Freshwater, Eutrophication Freshwater, Eutrophication Marine, Eutrophication Terrestrial, Ecotoxicity Freshwater, Land Use, Water Scarcity, Resource Use (Energy Carries), Resource Use (Mineral and Metals).
Foundation Earth, alongside leading political figures and scientific experts, has addressed a joint letter to the European Commission and the UK Government calling on “all stakeholders to engage openly, inclusively and collaboratively to find the optimised and harmonised solution” to food eco-labelling.
M&S, Sainsbury’s and the Co-op join the world’s biggest food company Nestlé, protein giant Tyson Foods and Spanish supermarket Eroski on the Foundation’s industry advisory group, each signing up to “explore the potential for environmental labelling on food products and to support Foundation Earth’s ambition to help build a more sustainable food industry.”
A pilot launch will see a group of the UK’s leading food brands launch front-of-pack environmental scores on a range of products this September – while the world’s largest food business, Nestlé, is funding an intensive nine-month research and development program to prepare the Foundation for full Europe-wide roll out in2022. Lynn’s firm Finnebrogue Artisan, which owns Britain’s biggest bacon brand Naked, is one of the first food producers adding eco-scores to its products this fall, in advance of COP26.
The UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change has warned the food industry already contributes up to37% of global greenhouse gases and that, without intervention, these are likely to increase by another 30% by2050, due to increasing demand from population growth. The pilot will run in parallel to an intensive nine-month research and development program, funded by Nestlé, that will combine the Mondra method with a system devised by an EU-funded consortium of Belgium’s Leuven University and Spanish research agency AZTI.
The Mondra and EIT Food systems are unique globally, in that they both allow two products of the same type to be compared on their individual merits via a complete product life cycle analysis, as opposed to simply using secondary data to estimate the environmental impact of an entire product group. The Foundation Earth R&D program will produce a fully-automated system for use across the UK and EU by the fall of 2022.
Professor Chris Elliott OBE, the UK’s leading food scientist and chair of the Foundation’s scientific advisory committee, said, “The development of a more transparent, sustainable global food supply system is of huge importance to the health of our planet and health of all citizens. We need a system based on the core principles of integrity. “I’ve been delighted to support the work of Foundation Earth to develop the sustainability label and am very proud to chair the Scientific Committee going forward.” Foundation Earth is also being backed by EIT Food, the European Commission’s multi-million Euro food innovation initiative.
Inspiring Labels
Just how green are your greens? A new traffic light system that gives food products an eco rating will soon let shoppers know. The front-of-pack environmental scores are to be trialled in the UK from September, with a view of rolling them out across Europe in 2022. Products including meat, milk and vegetables will be graded on their carbon emissions, biodiversity impact and water usage from farm to supermarket. Scores will be based on the individual merit of a product, rather than a generic rating for a food type.
The labels will look similar to the stickers already used by manufacturers to display the salt, sugar, fat and calorie content of foodstuffs. Products will be given a rating of A* to G, as well as a red, amber or green colour. The system will be trialled in the UK by brands including M&S, Costa Coffee and the organic food delivery company Abel & Cole. The pilot will include products with good and bad ratings to see whether people change their buying habits. Foundation Earth is aiming for a full European rollout of the rating system in 2022.
Andy Zynga, chief executive of EIT Food, the European Commission’s food innovation programme, said: “The launch of Foundation Earth is a very significant moment for the European food industry. It will bring about a credible and clear front-of-pack environmental labelling system on food products right across the continent.” Such transparency, supporters argue, will encourage supply chains to go greener. This is vital if nations are to meet legally-binding climate targets: according to the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change, the food industry accounts for 37 per cent of global greenhouse gases. Under a business-as-usual scenario, that figure is predicted to rise by 30 per cent by 2050.
Prof Chris Elliott, chair of the foundation’s scientific advisory committee, said: “The development of a more transparent, sustainable global food supply system is of huge importance to the health of our planet and health of all citizens.”
Will Carbon Labelling Make a Difference?
Eco labels have become a regular sight in supermarkets. Those meticulous shoppers who can be seen stooped over a packet, scouring the label for information that might persuade them to put it back on the shelf. Palm oil, perhaps. Sodium. Fat. Sugar. You may be one of those people yourself. If you are, you’ll soon have even more data to digest. A trial of eco labels for food and drink products has begun in UK supermarkets, ahead of a planned rollout across Europe from 2022.
Under the system, products including meat and vegetables are graded on carbon emissions, biodiversity impact and water usage from farm to supermarket. Items are given a rating of A* to G, as well as a red, amber or green colour to denote whether they have a large, medium or small ecological footprint. Scores are based on the individual merit of a product, rather than a generic rating for a food type.
Even if other brands follow Avallen’s lead — or are legislated to do so — are eco labels likely to influence people’s behaviour? A 2015 study offers reasons for optimism. It found that nutritional labels increased the proportion of people selecting healthier products by 18 per cent. Meanwhile, a systematic review of 60 other studies concluded that nutritional labelling increased vegetable intake by 13.5 per cent.
But where food labelling is perhaps most effective is in changing the habits of brands, rather than shoppers. At least that’s according to Sean Cash, an associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, US. “Even if consumers aren’t all rushing to steer away from the highest emitters, the fact that some are and everyone can see what everyone else is doing, could be a major spur for change,” he told Positive News. “That’s where I see a huge amount of potential.”
Cash gives the example of US legislators requiring food companies to disclose how much trans fatty acids were in their products. The law came into effect in 2006 and producers soon started reformulating recipes to eliminate unhealthy trans fats — or at least get them low enough to round down to 0g. “We got most of the way towards a removal of trans fats from the processed food supply in the US just through a requirement of disclosure,” he said. “It was almost as good as a ban.”
Using some form of environmental labels on packaging is inevitable if the world is to hit net zero targets by 2050. The format of these labels is yet to be determined. Why not implement this in your business today? We can help with the design and format of your enviro label, feel free to contact us and we will be happy to help.
