Take charge of your carbon footprint

Carbon labels are a simple, yet effective way to visualise the environmental impact of our food. They display the carbon emissions of a product's entire life cycle, factoring in farming, processing, transportation, and packaging.

CO2e, or carbon dioxide equivalent, is a standard unit for measuring carbon footprints. It aggregates several greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, and factors in their differing global warming potential, to produce a single, easily digestible number.

The boundary values are as follows:

A/B : 1.848 kg CO2e / kg
B/C : 3.235 kg CO2e / kg
C/D : 5.545 kg CO2e / kg
D/E : 9.242 kg CO2e / kg

These are set based on the planetary boundary for greenhouse gas emissions for food production, which is aligned with the Paris Agreement goal of less than 2 degrees global warming.

Food below the A/B boundary is produced within the planetary boundary for greenhouse gas emissions for food production, which is aligned with the Paris Agreement goal of less than 2 degrees global warming. All following boundaries are set relative to this A/B boundary.

B/C Boundary : 1.75x A/B, the carbon intensity limit that aligns with the planetary boundary for global food systems.

C/D Boundary : 3x A/B

D/E Boundary : 5x A/B

The score per serving allows you to see the exact impact of the meal you're eating. The colour and letter are assigned from the score per kilogram of product, to keep the scoring system standardised across all meals. This means we can make direct comparisons between a low impact (A) meal and a high impact (E) meal.

How to feed the world’s population without destroying the planet is truly one of the greatest problems of our time. Recent studies suggest that 31% of global emissions come from food production, so by focusing on food and drink, we can tackle a huge chunk of our global carbon footprint. We believe we can make a difference by empowering consumers to make more sustainable choices. And if more people buy green products, more businesses will shift their focus towards improving their practices. The great thing about focusing on food and drink means that everybody can be a part of the solution, because, well, everybody eats!

A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated by an individual, community, organisation or product. Your carbon footprint can be produced from many different sources, including transport, energy, food, or virtually any other type of consumption. An organisation’s carbon footprint can include not only their own emissions, but also those of their supply chain.

Our database on the environmental impacts of food uses full life-cycle assessment (LCA) data on the carbon footprint of products and ingredients. The life cycle stages are: raw material production, processing, packaging, transport, retail and distribution, consumption, and end-of-life. The database consists of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies alongside primary research and is independently reviewed by academic and industry experts. Where specific LCA values are unavailable due to a lack of data, the carbon footprint is calculated in line with average British consumption. This uses International Trade Centre data to map where food in the UK is typically sourced from. As more data becomes available, scores will be updated accordingly. Scores are refreshed monthly to use the newest most robust data. All of our CO2 scores and calculations are completed to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Standard. You can find more info about the standards at https://ghgprotocol.org/standards.