Achieving a more sustainable, healthy and trustworthy food system for consumers is one of the main challenges for European companies and administrations in order to guarantee the commitments set out in the Green Pact and the 2030 Agenda. To help achieve these objectives, both technological innovation and the collaboration and involvement of the food industry are essential.
In this context, Spanish food companies have begun to commit to measuring the environmental impact of their products, as well as exploring the possibility of implementing the new European ENVIROSCORE environmental labelling. This environmental communication system, designed and developed by the AZTI technology centre and KU Leuven, is based on a standardised and internationally accepted methodology, which allows the environmental impact of foodstuffs to be analysed and communicated in a simple, reliable and easily visualised way at the point of sale.
Some of the main Spanish companies to join this path towards reducing the environmental impact of products have been the dairy company Kaiku, the aquaculture company Avramar España, the canning company Grupo Calvo, the oat manufacturer and marketer Hariveasa and the egg producer and marketer Campomayor. All of them have two aspects in common: a business strategy that prioritises sustainability and they have seen in this label, and the methodology that accompanies it, an option that allows them to know and improve the degree of sustainability of their production (if this is observed), as well as an exercise in transparency towards their clients and consumers.
“ENVIROSCORE seeks to respond to a growing demand and concern, both from companies and administrations as well as from the general public, for food and beverages that have been produced and consumed following more sustainable and responsible processes”, highlights Rogelio Pozo, AZTI’s general manager.
The ENVIROSCORE calculation is based on the Product Environmental Foodprint (PEF), a methodology accepted, standardised and recommended by the European Commission. It calculates in a single final score the environmental impacts generated throughout all stages of production and consumption of a kilogram of packaged product, including, among others, the potential for climate change, ozone layer depletion, water pollution or the depletion of fossil resources.
Based on the analysis of these indicators and the use of an Artificial Intelligence algorithm, the aggregated score is converted into a simple, visual and intuitive communication system with 5 scales (A | B | C | D | E), which integrates all aspects related to the production, processing, packaging, distribution, consumption and waste management of that product.
The global vision of the environmental impact of products and the corresponding ENVIROSCORE labelling allows companies to design impact reduction strategies and make decisions taking into account the environmental and economic costs of these strategies.
The initiative has been supported by many companies and funded by the Basque Government and the European Union itself through the European food innovation agency EIT Food.
The ENVIROSCORE system, based on the PEF, has been validated in more than 20 product categories in which scenario simulation, eco-design and impact reduction plans have been worked on.
In this sense, and as endorsed by the journal Nature, the life cycle analysis that allows the ENVIROSCORE calculation is presented as a solid methodology to assess the overall environmental impact of a given product or service and to identify the potential environmental reduction due to the application of different environmental improvement strategies in the management of the supply chain.