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Woman looks at a white board displaying the Ocean Innovators Platform Networking Cocktail menu. It lists all items with a carbon label, ranging from A to E.
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How to Communicate Your Carbon Results

Get the best from your My Emissions data with the most effective ways to communicate your carbon results to customers and leverage them across your business. We’ll help you achieve your sustainability goals.

Carbon Count Menus

Carbon labelled menus are a great way of encouraging consumers to make informed, environmentally-friendly choices as well as underlining your business’ commitment to transparency and sustainability. 

We recommend showing off your carbon counts on physical and digital menus by doing the following:

  • Use the relevant A-E My Emissions cloud icon behind or under each product name. 
  • Display the colour-coded A-E My Emissions cloud ratings, with a short explanation at the bottom of the menu.
  • Highlight the credibility of your carbon data by referencing the origin as ‘Data supplied by My Emissions’.
  • Promote your low carbon food options by ordering products from lowest to highest rating.
Menu board for UEFA Champions Festival food truck
In partnership with UEFA and Just Eat Takeaway.com, My Emissions carbon labelled the menu boards at and around the 2024 UEFA Champions League Final.

Sustainability in New Product Development

Reach your sustainability goals by leveraging your carbon data in New Product Development (NPD), helping your development chefs create ever more sustainable dishes and food products.

Plant-based cheese maker, Honestly Tasty used their My Emissions carbon results to redevelop and relaunch one of their products, Herbi, achieving a 65% lower carbon footprint with the new product.

Herbi initially achieved an average C-rating under My Emissions analysis, but the granular data enabled Honestly Tasty to identify the GHG hotspots across their products, as well as which ingredient was at the root of Herbi’s high carbon emissions score.

Honestly Tasty's 100% plant based garlic and herb cheese, displaying a carbon rating of A.
Honestly Tasty’s 100% plant-based garlic and herb cheese now has an ‘A’ My Emissions carbon rating

With this knowledge, Honestly Tasty could develop a new version of their Gourney-style, Garlic & Herb cheese nut-free, removing the cashew nut, an ingredient that often has high value chain emissions and making it suitable for nut allergy sufferers.

The new Garlic & Herb product was rated ‘A’/Very Low, with a 65% lower carbon footprint than the original ‘Herbi’ product and 77.7% lower carbon emissions than an equivalent dairy cheese.

Loyalty Schemes

Low carbon loyalty programmes are a great way to engage your customers and clients, rewarding them for choosing low carbon dishes and making food choices that help the planet.

My Emissions partner clients who have employed this strategy include Downing College, Cambridge, which started its own carbon label loyalty scheme under the banner: ‘Save the Planet -Eat Great Food  – Earn Free Meals’

Consumers who purchased 10 ‘A, Very Low’ rated meals enjoyed their 11th meal for free. 

The loyalty card used by Downing College, Cambridge. Under the scheme consumers who purchased 10 ‘A / Very Low’ rated meals enjoyed their 11th meal for free.

Carbon Reduction & Savings Trackers

Measure emissions avoided and track carbon savings for individual customers, your business or organisation as you improve the carbon footprint of your food offerings and products and get closer to your sustainability and net zero goals. 

You could do this by measuring total CO2e saved, comparing it to equivalent transport journeys or by choosing one of the many more metrics available on the My Emissions platform. This includes the percentage of your products which are A-rated, average emissions per serving or the reduction of E / Very High products on your menus achieved by leveraging your data.  

UK plant-based meal kit service, GRUBBY uses its My Emissions carbon results to not only show the carbon footprint of its recipes but also to give customers a personalised In-App ‘Foodprint Tracker’, which analyses how much CO2e saved with each GRUBBY recipe compared with a meat equivalent.

Plant-based meal kit provider GRUBBY uses its My Emissions data to introduce a personalised carbon savings tracker giving their customers an easy way to see their carbon savings.

In Canteen Information

Carbon information cards alongside dishes, displayed on tables or in prominent positions in dining areas is an effective way to draw attention to your carbon labelling initiative

If you’re in the market to get really creative, you could follow this example of My Emissions client, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation: they installed an entire information wall in their Lisbon canteen explaining the My Emissions A-E carbon ratings of the meals on offer. Bold and effective.

An information wall in the Lisbon canteen of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation was an effective way to explain the carbon rating of meals on offer.

Real-World Comparisons Bring Carbon Counts Alive

Using real world comparisons which put savings into tangible context is a really effective way to engage with consumers, educating them about their food choices and the effect on the environment. 

  • Comparing lower carbon food choices to transport metrics (e.g. miles travelled on the train, by plane or in a car) brings the difference to life.
  • Comparing your vegan/vegetarian products against their meat/dairy equivalents is a great way to highlight the difference.

My Emissions client, Camile Thai Kitchen which runs over 40 restaurants in the UK and Ireland, highlighted the difference made when swapping out E rated beef for A rated tofu and vegetables in their Thai green curry. The difference is a saving of 2.14kgCo2e – the same as travelling by train from London to Paris.

Camile Thai Kitchen used a transport metric to highlight the positive difference made when choosing A rated tofu instead of E rated beef in their Thai green curry.

Want to Add Carbon Labels to Your Product or Menu?

My Emissions has recently launched a free plan, allowing restaurants (and any food business) to measure emissions of up to 3 dishes. With our AI recipe generator, you can have carbon ratings in minutes and start adding carbon labels to your menu.

Sign up below, book a call with our team today to learn more, or contact us at hello@myemissions.co.

Published on:
26 July 2024

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