Just Eat for Business to trial carbon labelling to raise awareness of environmental impact of office food
Corporate food delivery service Just Eat for Business is carrying out a carbon labelling trial, to help consumers pick more sustainable food choices at the workplace and support restaurants with making more informed decisions around their ingredients.
The company is partnering with food carbon rating developers My Emissions to calculate the carbon footprint of main menu items and provide labels for the dishes on offer.
Just Eat for Business is funding the three-month trial, working with 12 independent London-based restaurant partners to implement the labels, including Atcha, Choppaluna, Hala Wala, and Urban Greens.
These restaurants will use a carbon label for their meals which follows a traffic light colour system, rated from A, indicating a “Very Low carbon impact”, to E, suggesting a “Very High carbon impact”. The labels will account for how farming, production, transport, and packaging of the meals have impacted the environment. A beef burger for instance, would receive an E rating, as it uses four times more emissions to produce than a chicken burger, which is C rated.
According to a recent Just Eat for Business carbon impact survey carried out with London-based employees, nearly half of respondents said they consider the environmental impact of the food they order to the office.
Matt Ephgrave, Managing Director at Just Eat for Business commented on the news in a statement: “Exploring ways to minimise our environmental impact remains an important topic for us, and we believe extending this to also support our independent restaurant partners on their sustainability journey is key. Through this carbon labelling trial, we aim to help our restaurant partners better understand the carbon impact that their food options have whilst also empowering workers to make more climate conscious food decisions.
“We’re excited to be part of the journey to making the food delivery industry more environmentally friendly and are looking forward to seeing more and more businesses adopt the same approach.”
Matthew Isaacs, co-founder of My Emissions added: “We’re looking forward to continuing our partnership with Just Eat into the next phase of their carbon labelling trial. Just Eat for Business offers another opportunity to learn more about how our carbon labels can impact a variety of customers’ choices and increase awareness of the impact of carbon emissions in the food industry.”
Aadit Shankar, founder and Director of the restaurant Atcha said of the trial: “We’re really pleased to be involved in this project to learn more about the carbon impact of the ingredients in our food as well as supporting our customers in making more climate conscious food choices. It will also help us gain insights into the preferences of our customers, as we know that they value transparency when it comes to sustainability.”
The Just Eat food delivery platform trialled a carbon labelling system in Brighton earlier this year, where it was tested with five restaurants over 12 weeks. One of the restaurant partners, Fat Pizza and Fat Burgers and Desserts have since decided to expand the trial to over 40 stores nationwide through the Just Eat platform.
Carbon labelling is becoming popular elsewhere in the food industry too. Earlier in July, London-based foodtech start-up Dynamify teamed up with sustainability software developer Klimato to create a digital carbon labelling system for the UK catering industry.
