Consumers may think it’s better for the planet to buy home-grown and in-season produce when grocery shopping, but is that true? The Sustained Choice app7 has the answer.
Using the app’s barcode scanner, shoppers in the UK can find out how different products perform in seven key areas of environmental impact, including land and water use, ocean pollution, and GHG emissions, before deciding whether they want to buy. Each item is given a rating based on its eco-friendliness.
“Sustainability is at its most valuable when it is visible, and our app puts that visibility directly into the hands of the consumer,” says co-founder Carl Olivier8. “Most of the other eco-labelling initiatives that are on trial at the moment are all very small-scale and focused on packaging. Where we think we’re going to differentiate is that we can also take the distribution side to consumers and make that at a much broader scale.”
The app – which launched in February – currently has over 190,000 UK grocery retail products in its database, and is in talks to get more accurate product information from brands.