Environmental Impact Scores for Products

This guide will explain the Environment Impact section of an Erudus product specification — where the data comes from, what each metric measures, how to read the Carbon Intensity Score and the Data Quality Score, and what it all means for your business.

What are Environmental Impact Scores?

Erudus has partnered with Mondra, a specialist in food and drink environmental impact assessment, to bring product-level environmental data into Erudus product specifications.

The Environment Impact section shows three things:

• Impact per kg — five measures of environmental pressure, each expressed per kilogram of product.
• Carbon Intensity Score — the product's greenhouse gas emissions expressed as a single number on a colour-coded scale.
• Data Quality Score — how much confidence you can place in the figures shown.

The data is available across the Erudus data pool, and is visible to manufacturers, wholesalers and caterers viewing the specification.

Where does the data come from?

Mondra uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to calculate a product's environmental footprint. Rather than looking at a single stage of production, LCA follows the product's whole journey, including the growing or rearing of its ingredients, processing, packaging, transport and storage, and adds up the environmental pressure at each step.

Traditionally this has been slow and expensive work, which is why product-level environmental data has been scarce in the food industry. Mondra's methodology changes that by producing a footprint from on-pack information alone: the ingredients list, the quantities declared, and the product category.

This is the reason Erudus is able to show environmental impact figures at scale, rather than only for the handful of products that have been through a full commissioned assessment.

What does each environmental metric measure?

All five figures are shown per kilogram of product, so products can be compared on a like-for-like basis regardless of pack size. In every case, a lower number means less environmental pressure.

Carbon

CO₂ eq. per kg

The greenhouse gas emissions released across the product's life cycle. Several gases contribute to climate change, so all of them are converted into the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide and reported as a single figure. This is the metric most people mean when they talk about a product's carbon footprint.

Water Use

L eq. per kg

The volume of fresh water consumed to produce the product, most of which is usually taken up by irrigating crops or watering livestock. The figure is weighted for water scarcity, so a litre used in a region under water stress counts for more than a litre used somewhere with plentiful supply. Large values may be displayed in kilolitres (kl) for readability.

Eutrophication

PO₄^3- eq. per kg

The effect of nutrient pollution on rivers, lakes and coastal waters. When nitrogen and phosphorus from fertiliser or manure run off into waterways, they trigger excessive algae growth, which starves the water of oxygen and kills fish and plant life. All contributing nutrients are converted into an equivalent amount of phosphate so they can be reported together.

Land Use

m²*yr per kg

How much land is occupied to produce the product, and for how long. The unit combines the two: one square metre used for one year is one m²*yr. Measuring it this way means a crop that occupies land briefly is not treated the same as one that ties up the same area for several seasons.

Biodiversity

SLI per kg

The pressure the product places on wildlife and natural habitats, reported using a species loss index. Producing food changes the land it uses, and that affects the range of species able to live there. This metric estimates the scale of that effect.

Why do some units say "eq."?

Several of these metrics bring together a number of different substances that cause the same type of environmental harm, but not to the same degree. Rather than list each one separately, the impact of every substance is converted into the amount of a single reference substance that would cause the same effect: carbon dioxide for greenhouse gases, phosphate for nutrient pollution. "Eq." is short for equivalent, and it is what allows a complex mix of emissions to be reported as one comparable number.

How do I read the Carbon Intensity Score?

The Carbon Intensity Score turns a product's greenhouse gas emissions into a single number between 1 and 99.

The Carbon figure under Impact per kg is precise, but hard to interpret in isolation — most people have no reference point for whether 5.59 kg CO₂ eq. per kg is high or low. The Carbon Intensity Score puts that same information on a consistent scale that can be read at a glance.

A lower score is better. The number represents impact rather than performance, so the more carbon a product is responsible for, the higher it scores.

The colour coding removes any ambiguity about direction: green always means low impact, regardless of the number attached to it.

Bear in mind that the Carbon Intensity Score covers greenhouse gas emissions only. A product can score well on carbon while placing significant pressure on water supplies, or the other way round. If you are assessing overall environmental performance, read the score alongside the five Impact per kg figures rather than in place of them.

How do I read the Data Quality Score?

The Data Quality Score is a measure of confidence in the calculation, not a measure of the product's environmental performance.

Every impact figure is only as reliable as the information behind it. Where Mondra has detailed, product-specific information, the resulting figures closely describe that particular product. Where that detail is not available, the calculation falls back on typical values for products of that type. The Data Quality Score tells you which end of that range you are looking at.

What does the "Industry Average" banner mean?

Where a banner appears above the results reading "This impact score is based on an Industry Average for this product type", the figures have not been calculated from data about that specific product. Instead, Mondra has produced an estimate using typical values for the category the product belongs to where there has not been enough information on a specification to provide a calculated score for the product.

This is a useful starting point — it means an environmental footprint is available straight away rather than waiting on a full assessment — but it will not capture what makes an individual product different from others of its type. Two products in the same category with very different sourcing, recipes etc. will show the same industry average figures if there is not enough information to calculate a product specific score.

Understanding Impact Stages

Manufacturers viewing their specifications will see a new "Impact" button at the top of the page. Clicking this will take them to the Environmental Impact metrics page for their specification where they can see impact stages metrics for the product.

The Impact per kg figures tell you how much environmental pressure a product creates in total. Impact Stages tells you where in the supply chain that pressure comes from.

Each environmental metric is broken down across five stages of the product's life cycle, with the contribution of each stage shown as a percentage. It answers a different question to the headline figures: not "how big is this product's footprint", but "which part of making it is responsible for the footprint".

For a Manufacturer, this is the most actionable part of the environmental data. A total figure tells you where you stand. The stage breakdown tells you where to look if you want to change it.

What are the Five Stages?

Farming

The growing of crops and the rearing of livestock that produce the product's ingredients. This covers the land occupied, fertiliser and feed used, on-farm energy, and emissions from soil and livestock themselves.

Storage

Holding the product and its ingredients in warehouses and distribution centres. The impact here is largely energy, and it depends heavily on temperature: ambient storage uses very little, while chilled and frozen storage use considerably more.

Packaging

Producing the materials the product is packed in — extracting the raw materials, manufacturing the packaging and getting it to the production site. It reflects both the type of material and how much of it is used.

Transport

Moving ingredients to the production site and the finished product onwards through the supply chain. Distance matters, but so does the mode of transport and whether the load needs to be kept chilled or frozen in transit.

Processing

Turning raw ingredients into the finished product. This covers the energy and water used in manufacturing, along with waste generated during production.

How do I read the Impact Stages Breakdown?

Each metric has its own set of bars. The same product will usually show a very different shape from one metric to the next, and those differences are the useful part.

Some metrics tend to be concentrated in a single stage. Land Use and Biodiversity are good examples: both are driven almost entirely by the land a product occupies, and farming is the only stage that occupies land in any meaningful way. For most products these will be higher at the farming stage.

Others tend to be spread across several stages. Carbon is the usual example, because every stage of the supply chain uses energy in some form. A product might show carbon split fairly evenly between farming, processing, transport and packaging.

Key points to Understand

• Five metrics, five different questions: A product can perform well on one measure and poorly on another. Look across all five rather than focusing on carbon alone.
• Lower is always better: This applies to all five impact figures and to the Carbon Intensity Score. Green is the good end of every scale.
• Data quality is not performance: A Poor rating tells you the figures are an estimate. It says nothing about whether the product is good or bad for the environment.
• Everything is per kilogram: Figures are unaffected by pack size, so products of different formats can be compared directly.