Global Trends in Food Eco-Scoring
In recent years, interest in eco-conscious food consumption and sustainable consumption has been growing. At the same time, the visibility of eco scores is still limited. As a result, many consumers who are motivated to act are not yet able to translate that intent into actual behaviour.
This article introduces trends and case examples of eco-scoring and its communication to consumers, with a focus on Europe and the United States, where adoption is advancing.
Table of Contents
Growing Consumer Awareness of Sustainable Food Consumption
In recent years, sustainability has gained a strong presence in the international community. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), set out in the ”Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” adopted unanimously by UN member states at the UN Summit in September 2015, are increasingly visible in daily life and are becoming more familiar.
As interest in sustainability rises globally, investors’ targets have also started to change. In the past, investment decisions were mainly driven by financial returns, and capital tended to concentrate in companies with high growth potential in terms of operating profit. In recent years, however, ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) investment has emerged, focusing on whether companies are managed with consideration for ESG factors. Many rating agencies now evaluate companies from an ESG perspective.
These investment trends are partly driven by investors’ own ESG initiatives. At the same time, there is also a recognition that companies practicing ESG-conscious management are expected to have strong growth potential in their profit-making activities. In other words, consumers, who are in a position to choose among companies, are showing greater interest in sustainability. This makes it increasingly important for companies to manage their businesses with sustainability in mind in order to be chosen by such consumers.
In particular, climate change is becoming a major concern among consumers.
According to a global survey conducted in 2021, 73 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that they want to significantly reduce their impact on the environment and nature. This indicates that climate change is one of the key agendas within sustainability (*2).
In addition, a survey released by Ipsos in December 2019 (*3) found that, over the past few years, 69 percent of consumers globally had changed their purchasing behavior due to concerns about climate change. Within this group, changes in purchasing behavior related to food remained at a global average of 46 percent.
One of the factors behind this situation is the limited visualization of food sustainability (eco-scoring). Because there are still only a limited number of options that are both “sustainable” and “delicious,” especially in countries with diverse food cultures where “taste” is given high priority, consumers tend to choose taste over sustainability.
Various services have emerged, mainly in Europe and the United States, to address these consumer challenges. The following sections introduce several of these examples.
Case Studies on Communicating Food Sustainability to Consumers
Traceability-Based Approaches
The first group consists of services that utilize traceability.
According to research by EIT Food (*4), factors that hinder consumers from leading a sustainable diet include the difficulty of knowing which foods are produced sustainably and the wide variation in how food sustainability is perceived. As a result, consumers often do not know whether to trust what companies claim or what they are actually doing (*5).
Traceability clarifies “when, where, and by whom a product was made” and enables tracking from data material procurement through production to consumption or disposal. It is used across industries involved in production and distribution (*6).
Below are two examples of services that leverage traceability.
The first example is “ThankMyFarmer™,” offered by Farmer Connect SA (*7), a company headquartered in Switzerland. This platform enables traceability of origin and quality by allowing consumers to scan QR codes printed on the packaging of coffee and cocoa products. It is built on farmer connect® blockchain technology, which incorporates IBM Food Trust from IBM. This links information from the place of origin to the end consumer (*8). Through an app, users can access information such as the cultivation environment of the coffee beans they purchased, blend details, and distribution processes (*9). They can also donate funds through programs that support sustainability and the prosperity of producing regions, thereby gaining opportunities to engage with local producer communities (*10).
The second example is “Trace” from Fairfood (*11), a company headquartered in the Netherlands. Trace is a user-friendly, blockchain-based platform for agri-food companies. It makes supply chains transparent and allows users to trace the supply chain from farmers to consumers (*12).
This service currently supports traceability for products such as citrus fruits, cocoa, coconuts, coffee, tomatoes, sugarcane, pineapples, shrimp, and vanilla.
However, traceability-based approaches are said to face two major challenges in scaling up.
The first challenge is cost, which tends to be higher compared with other approaches. Traceability services primarily target primary commodities and processed goods that are relatively easy to trace. However, the products we, as consumers, are confronted with when making choices appear not only as such primary commodities and processed goods but also as a wide variety of dishes.
As product complexity increases, it becomes difficult for traceability technologies, which require significant labor, to keep up. This makes large-scale adoption challenging at this stage and limits the potential of traceability as a short-term solution (*13).
The second challenge is that it is difficult for consumers to understand what traceability means in terms of their contribution to sustainability. Traceability mainly focuses on tracking supply chains. However, it does not clearly show how eco-friendly or ethical those supply chains are. As a result, it does not fully resolve consumers’ difficulty in identifying which products are truly eco-friendly (*14). Moreover, increased traceability has exposed another problem: the supply chain itself is not always reliable. The information disclosed can appear adjustable or overly ambiguous, making it difficult for consumers to interpret and weakening trust in sustainability claims. (*15)
LCA (Life Cycle Assessment)–Based Approaches
Against this backdrop, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has attracted attention as a method that quantitatively analyzes environmental impact by combining primary data and statistical data.
LCA is an environmental impact assessment method that covers the entire life cycle of a product, from raw material procurement through manufacturing, processing, distribution, sales, and disposal. In LCA, each step in a product’s life cycle is modeled. This enables estimation of the resources required for production and the volume of waste and emissions generated in the process. The environmental burden is then calculated using indicators for impact categories specific to LCA.
Although LCA is defined in the ISO 14040 series, which is an international standard, it has not been widely adopted in the food sector due to the large number of products and the complexity of supply chains. Recently, however, the enhancement of databases and data processing technologies has led to more application cases in the food sector. Below are examples of eco-scoring services that use LCA.
Primary Data–Based Approaches
First, we introduce a primary data–based example. A representative case is the “carbon label” of Just Salad (*16). Primary data–based approaches present environmental impact values calculated through LCA directly to consumers as “absolute values,” using either a single indicator or multiple indicators. Just Salad is a fast-casual restaurant chain headquartered in the United States, with locations in the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
Just Salad displays carbon labels on its menu items, expressed in kg CO₂e. This unit stands for “kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent” and is used to indicate emissions of various greenhouse gases. The carbon label shows greenhouse gas emissions across all stages from production to disposal (*17).
Primary data–based approaches enable communication of quantitative figures. However, some general consumers find these numerical values difficult to interpret.
Certification-Based Approaches
Next, we introduce certification-based examples that display evaluations conducted by certification bodies. Certification-based approaches indicate, through “certification” or “labels,” whether a product has met criteria or thresholds set by third-party organizations based on LCA or equivalent assessments.
A representative case is the “Carbon Trust label” provided by the Carbon Trust (*18). The Carbon Trust was established by the UK government in 2001 as an organization dedicated solely to promoting decarbonization among companies, governments, and financial institutions. In 2007, it launched the world’s first carbon footprint label. Carbon (*19). Trust labels display information such as the greenhouse gas emissions generated in producing the product, how those emissions were verified, and when they were calculated.
Specifically, the labels issued by the Carbon Trust are classified into ten types according to what they claim.
The first type indicates that the product’s carbon footprint has actually been reduced year on year and that the company is committed to ongoing reductions based on a verified reduction plan. For consumer products, this covers the cradle-to-grave footprint.
The second type indicates that a verified carbon management plan is in place for the product’s carbon footprint and that future reductions are planned. For consumer products, it also targets cradle-to-grave footprints.
The third type indicates that the product has achieved a level of carbon footprint reduction that meets certain criteria, that ongoing efforts are being made under a reduction plan, and that additional funding is being provided to climate action projects in line with the Carbon Trust’s guidelines.
The fourth type indicates that future reductions in the product’s carbon footprint are planned and that funding is being provided to additional climate action projects.
The fifth type indicates that the product’s carbon footprint reductions are being made in line with a reduction pathway consistent with achieving net-zero emissions (Net Zero pathway).
The sixth type indicates that it is not the product itself but the packaging whose carbon footprint has been reduced year on year and that there is a commitment to continued reductions.
The seventh type indicates that the life cycle carbon footprint of the product is significantly lower than that of comparable products in the same brand.
The eighth type indicates that the life cycle carbon footprint of the product is lower than the standard values for similar products in the market.
The ninth type indicates that the electricity used is derived 100 percent from renewable energy and that, for Scope 2 reporting, it can be treated as zero emissions, as verified by a third party.
The tenth type indicates that the greenhouse gas emissions of the product, converted into a CO₂-equivalent carbon footprint, have been calculated and verified by a third party. This label is used exclusively for B2B products (*20).
Integrated Comparative Approaches
Finally, we introduce two international examples of integrated comparative approaches.
The first example is “Eco-score,” implemented by Carrefour (*21). Carrefour is a major retailer headquartered in France. It conducted a pilot in which Eco-score was displayed for all food products sold on its own e-commerce site. The Eco-score visualizes the degree of environmental impact of each food product and provides one of the criteria for consumer purchasing decisions. The Eco-score methodology was designed by players in the consumer product information space, such as Yuka and Open Food Facts, and Carrefour used it without modification. Eco-score evaluates a product’s composition and classifies products on a scale from A to E based on environmental impact calculated from the product’s calories (*22).
Carrefour used the Agribalyse database to build default scores by referring to average ingredient sets (content and proportion) for each food product. This improved the efficiency of data collection. To reduce the cost of physical labeling, Carrefour first tested consumer response on its e-commerce site (*23).
The second example is “ECO-SCORE® by Beelong” from Beelong (*24). Beelong is a Switzerland-based company that conducts environmental assessments of food. ECO-SCORE® by Beelong provides LCA from farm to shelf based on data from the World Food Database, Ecoinvent, and Agribalyse, supplemented by actual data collected on food products such as ingredients, production methods, and transportation distances. It also integrates parameters that are not usually considered in LCA, such as biodiversity assessments and animal welfare.
Among international examples of eco-scoring, integrated comparative approaches are said to be the most effective in influencing consumers.
The Swiss research institution MDPI (*25) conducted a study comparing the effectiveness of six different carbon footprint label designs to determine which design is most effective for consumers. The study suggested that qualitative carbon footprint displays using color-coded traffic light–style labels, particularly those that claim impact reduction or climate neutrality, are the most effective in encouraging reduced climate impact (*26).
In addition, research reported by Sustainable Brands (SB), a U.S.-based community focused on sustainability brands (*27), shows that carbon footprint labeling can increase the likelihood of consumer purchase. To maximize this effect, it is important to show how good a product is in relative terms compared with alternatives (*28).
While integrated comparative approaches are said to be highly persuasive for consumers, they require the analysis of a large volume of data. As a result, there is a need to build a sufficiently efficient analytical framework, and this requirement can be a challenge.
Enhancing Product Value and Corporate Value
Among the case examples introduced in this article, integrated comparative eco-scoring is considered the most powerful in appealing to consumers. “My-Eco-Ruler” provided by our company, corresponds to this approach. For more details about “My-Eco-Ruler,” please see the dedicated explanation.
“My Eco Ruler” incorporates scoring methods used in Europe and the United States. It is offered as a smartphone-based service for consumers and is designed to help them practice sustainable food consumption as a “habit,” thereby leading to more continuous behavioral change.
At the beginning of this article, we identified the lack of clarity for consumers as a key challenge in sustainable consumption. Another issue is that it is difficult for businesses and producers to know whether consumers are actually choosing their products from a sustainability perspective.
Recently, an increasing number of businesses and producers have told us that they are unsure whether sustainability-conscious management will truly attract consumer interest. As a result, many are struggling to decide how much they should invest in sustainable product development and related communications.
Through “My-Eco-Ruler,” it becomes possible to track how consumers choose products based on the eco-scoring information that companies communicate. This allows companies to quantify, in more concrete terms, the return on investment in sustainability-conscious product development and related communication.
If you are interested in “My-Eco-Ruler,” please feel free to contact us.
cuoncrop ESG Global Trends Research Division
References
*1 https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/oda/sdgs/pdf/sdgs_gaiyou_202206.pdf
*3 https://www.ipsos.com/ja-jp
*5 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2300305-what-are-the-obstacles-to-sustainable-eating/
*7 https://www.farmerconnect.com/
*8 https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000001.000087682.html
*9 https://www.itochu.co.jp/ja/news/press/2021/210316.html
*10 https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000001.000087682.html
*12 https://fairfood.org/en/solutions-for-a-fair-supply-chain/blockchain-tool-trace/
*14 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3837
*15https://doi.org/10.1080/13675567.2025.2574470
*16 https://www.justsalad.com/
*17 https://justsalad.com/carbonlabel
(*18) https://label.carbontrust.com/
(*19) https://www.carbontrust.com/en-as/who-we-are/our-history
(*20)https://www.carbontrust.com/what-we-do/carbon-footprint-labelling/product-carbon-footprint-label
*21 https://www.carrefour.com/en
*22ttps://beelong.ch/en/eco-score-beelong/
*23 https://www.carrefour.com/en/news/carrefourecoscore
*24 https://swissfoodnutritionvalley.com/the-beelong-eco-score-lands-at-coop/
*26 Sustainability | Free Full-Text | Consumer Preferences for Different Designs of Carbon Footprint Labelling on Tomatoes in Germany—Does Design Matter? | HTML (mdpi.com)