Introducing carbon labelling
As a leader in online food delivery, we want to help make the takeaway industry more sustainable. And that includes helping restaurants and customers make more informed choices. That’s why we have partnered with My Emissions to test the use of carbon labelling on dishes.
What’s carbon labelling?
Food choices can have a big environmental impact. During farming, production, transportation and even consumption, the products we eat release certain amounts of greenhouse gases (you know, the gases responsible for climate change). That’s called a carbon footprint.
A carbon label on a dish is a quick way to determine the meal’s carbon footprint and how sustainable it really is. Our carbon footprint labels follow a simple traffic light system, so it’s really easy to understand: A, in green, is the lowest footprint possible, while E, in red, is the highest.
The calculations done by My Emissions cover the carbon footprint of a food product from the farm until when the product reaches the store or restaurant. The labels do not currently take into account the delivery of the finished product from restaurant to consumer, as that can differ across our platform depending on transportation method. Farming, transport of individual ingredients, and packaging are all taken into account which covers the majority of the food’s carbon impact whilst relying on as few assumptions as possible. More info can be found here: https://myemissions.green/our-data/.
Our trial run
In the first phase of our trial, several restaurants in Brighton displayed carbon footprint labels on their menus on the Just Eat app, to help raise awareness of the environmental impact of customers' food choices. We are now extending our carbon labelling trial to London with Just Eat for Business, to also empower corporate customers in making more sustainable food choices and continue to explore the impact of carbon labelling.
Key takeaways
Most of us know meat and dairy have the biggest environmental impact. So, when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint, it’s easy to choose between a beef burger and a plant-based burger. But what’s the difference between a dish with meat and one with fish, or between two plant-based dishes?
Carbon labelling food can be an effective way to make it easier for everyone to better understand the carbon footprint of takeaways. Sometimes, simply swapping beef for tofu in a curry, could bring your carbon footprint rating from E to A.
But carbon labelling isn’t just useful for customers. It can provide great insights for restaurants too. With it they can understand just how sustainable their menu really is. They can even use the full breakdown to understand where most greenhouse emissions are coming from. So they can take action by switching ingredients, producers, method of cooking, etc. Clever, right?
Our partner
We’re not doing this trial alone. We wouldn’t be able to do it without the support of our labelling partner, My Emissions.
Working closely with several food companies to measure and reduce their carbon footprint, My Emissions has developed a food carbon label that's easy for everyone to understand. Their carbon labelling is supported by Innovate UK and has even been used at high-profile global events like the UN Ocean Conference.
And now they’re helping us – and you – make takeaways more sustainable too.
For more information about My Emissions and their carbon labelling service, please visit myemissions.green
