Press Release – Paris, Sharm El Sheikh, November 15th 2022 – Open Food Facts expands Eco-Score across the world & calls for international cooperation to turn Food pledges into action
Key points
- For COP27, Open Food Facts is announcing that it is expanding the Eco-Score experimentally to 50 countries, including Egypt, the US and the UK.
- Shoppers can now access the environmental impact of more than 2 million everyday food products.
- We hope the Eco-Score will inspire delegates and food producers from across the world to adopt environmental labeling of food.
Paris, Sharm El Sheikh, November 15th 2022 – French non-profit Open Food Facts has expanded the Eco-Score beyond France, to +50 more countries in the world, including Egypt (so that climate delegates can be inspired to bring the Eco-Score home), the United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland (full list at the end of this press release).
With a simple scan on the Open Food Facts mobile app, citizens and shoppers in those countries can now access the environmental impact score of more than 2 million everyday grocery items, from coffee and cereal to pasta and biscuits.
With one quarter of global emissions coming from food, consumers are increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of their everyday consumer choices. For instance, Google searches for sustainable goods have risen by 71% globally between 2016 and 2020.
The Eco-Score will help retailers meet this growing demand; already, a number of major grocery chains, including Lidl in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, have launched Eco-Score pilots, and are about to add the label to thousands of products online and in select stores.
With over 120 different types of ecolabels currently in use on food and beverage products worldwide, understanding true environmental impact is challenging. The Eco-Score is the first to provide an open, free, massively scalable and standardized solution to this problem.
Pierre Slamich, co-founder of the Open Food Facts NGO, added: “Since we launched the Eco-Score on January 7th 2021, we’ve seen monthly over 2,4M people using our apps or website to get informed, many from countries outside of France. We want to make it easier for shoppers, no matter where they live, to understand the environmental impact of their purchase decisions, so we’re excited now to launch in more countries outside of France.”
Learn more about how the Eco-score is calculated.
Full list of countries where we now compute an Eco-Score:
Andorra, Albania, Austria, Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Algeria, Estonia, Egypt, Spain, European Union, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Isle of Man, Iceland, Italy, Jersey, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Libya, Morocco, Monaco, Moldova, Montenegro, Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Palestine, Portugal, Palau, Romania, Republic of Serbia, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, San Marino, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United States of America, Vatican and Kosovo
If your country is not in the list, rest assured that we want to include it as soon as possible. Get in touch at contact@openfoodfacts.org if you’d like to help or at presse@openfoodfacts.org if you are a journalist.
Available for interviews: Pierre Slamich, co-founder of Open Food Facts
Press Contact :
Pierre Slamich – co-founder of the Open Food Facts NGO – pierre@openfoodfacts.org – +33 6 02 13 14 57
Press inquiries: presse@openfoodfacts.org
About Open Food Facts
Open Food Facts was created in France in 2012 with the aim of enabling everyone to make more informed choices for their health and the planet, by making food information accessible and useful. Non-profit and strictly independent of the food industry, Open Food Facts mobilizes its community and technology to transform the food system by making transparency a standard. Its work is available to everyone in open data, as well as through its official mobile and web apps.
Essential briefing points:
- Context: Climate Crisis, Climate urgency, 30% of human carbon emissions related to food.
- Information about your food and its impacts (health, environment) is a fundamental right.
- Open Food Facts is a NGO that was created in France in 2012 with the aim of making food information useful and accessible to enable everyone to make more informed choices for their health, and for the health of the planet.
- Non-profit and strictly independent of the food industry, Open Food Facts mobilizes its community and technology to transform the food system by making transparency a standard.
- Its work is available to everyone in open data, as well as through its official mobile and web apps.
- Open Food Facts launched Eco-Score in January 2021 , a simple A to E color grade to give consumers and producers more transparency into the environmental impact of food
- It has seen great traction with consumers, and several leading retailers such as Carrefour or Lidl are conducting real-life pilots, including in Glasgow stores
- For COP27, Open Food Facts is announcing that it is expanding the Eco-Score experimentally to 50 countries, including Egypt, the US and the UK.
- Today, at Sharm El Sheikh, we finally extend a call for international cooperation to adapt/improve the Eco-Score to all countries in the world. (e.g. gathering packaging recycling % data)
Related