Moves to display environmental scores on food packs could be coming very soon

Foundation Earth, a recently established non profit organisation, has united both big brands (Nestle, Danone, Tyson Foods, Pepsico) and leading retailers (Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons and more) behind an initiative to launch eco-score labels to applied to all food products across Europe.

An eco-score is a font of pack indicator of a product’s environmental impact, involving a grading system and colour coding to show degree of impact by certain criteria.  The indicator will look similar to labels already used for nutritional content, similar to both UK traffic light labels and the increasingly popular Nutriscore labelling system used more and more in European markets.

The Foundation Earth system analyses a product’s life cycle weighted 49% carbon, 17% water usage, 17% water pollution and 17% biodiversity.  The Eco Score system which has been trialled by Colruyt in Belgium and Lidl in a number of regions, uses French database Agribalyse for its analysis.

Eco score labelling is already beginning to happen, even if there is not yet one single common tool that all brands and supermarkets are following.  Sustainability has never been higher on the agenda, so it’s a good bet that all brands will soon need to select one system or another to communicate to consumers ever more demanding of clear information on the planetary impact of the products they choose to buy.