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Eco-Score: miljøpåvirkningen av matvarer

Eco-Score

Eco-Score er en miljøscore (ecoscore) fra A til E som gjør det enkelt å sammenligne innvirkningen av matprodukter på miljøet.

Hvorfor en miljøscore?

Flere og flere forbrukere er tenker på konsekvensene mat har på ikke bare sin egen helse, men også på helsen til planeten vår. Takket være Nutri-Score er det nå veldig lett å ta hensyn til ernæringsmessig kvalitet på produkter når du handler, men det er veldig vanskelig om ikke umulig å sammenligne produktenes miljømessige fotavtrykk.

Det haster å gi forbrukere klar informasjon om dette miljøavtrykket, slik at de raskt og enkelt kan sammenligne det med ulike produkter. Det er dette miljøskalaen Eco-Score lar deg gjøre.

Eco-Score, et verktøy for mer bærekraftig mat

Eco-Score hjelper forbrukere som ønsker å jobbe mot et mer bærekraftig kosthold, ved å oppfordre dem til å:

  • Spise mindre kjøtt, men av bedre kvalitet
  • Bruke mer økologiske produkter og produkter med kvalitetsmerker
  • Velge lokale og sesongbaserte produkter, med lite emballasje
  • Unngå produkter som inneholder problematiske ingredienser (truet fisk, uholdbar palmeolje)

Hva er Eco-Score?

Eco-Score er designet basert på en modell som ligner på Nutri-Score: det er en skala fra A til E som oppsummerer 15 miljøpåvirkninger. Eco-Score-poengsummen består av en farget bladformet logo med bokstav fra A (veldig lav innvirkning) til E (veldig høy innvirkning).

Eco-Score (ecoscore)

Eco-Score støttes av et konsortium av mange aktører som er forpliktet til bedre ernæring.

The actors of the Eco-Score collective

How is the Eco-Score calculated?

Referanseverdien: livssyklusanalyse (LCA) med data fra Agribalyse databasen

For hver produktkategori etableres en referanseverdi ved hjelp av data fra Agribalyse miljødatabasen designet av ADEME og INRAE. Disse dataene tilsvarer livssyklusanalysen (LCA) for produktene.

Livssyklusvurdering (LCA)

Life cycle analysis is a standardized assessment method for carrying out a multi-stage environmental assessment and multi-criteria:

  • 6 production steps: agriculture, processing, packaging, transportation, distribution and consumption
  • 14 environmental impact indicators: climate change/carbon footprint, ozone layer depletion, ionizing radiation, land, water, and energy use; pollution of air and marine and fresh water (particles, acidification, eutrophication); and depletion of resources.

Bonuses and penalties to refine the grading of each product

In order to take into account certain impacts on the environment which are not covered well by the life cycle analysis (such as biodiversity) and the specificities of each product within the same category, the score of reference is modulated with bonuses and penalties:

Mode of production

A bonus is awarded to products that have an official label, a label or a certification that guarantees environmental benefits (organic, fair trade, HVE, Label Rouge, Bleu Blanc Cœur, MSC/ASC).

Ingrediensopprinnelse

A bonus is awarded based on the origin of the ingredients. This bonus takes into account the impact on transportation and also the environmental policy of each producer's country.

Endangered species

A penalty is given to products that contain ingredients that have significant negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, such as palm oil, the production of which is responsible for massive deforestation.

Emballasje

A penalty is calculated to take into account the circularity of packaging (use of recycled raw material and recyclability) and overpacking.

An increased need for transparency to better measure and reduce environmental impacts

To accurately calculate the Eco-Score, it is necessary to have information which is not necessarily specified on the packaging (such as the origin and the exact percentage of each ingredient) or which is rarely available in usable form (such as a list of all the components of the packaging with the precise types of plastics used).

Average values are used when this information is not yet available, but we are now calling on everyone to help us collect this information which will be very useful for the Eco-Score but also for many other uses.



How to see the Eco-Score for food products?

Scan products with the Open Food Facts app

The Open Food Facts app allows you to quickly get the Eco-Score of products: all you have to do is scan their barcode. If you have already installed the Open Food Facts app, please update it to get the new version!

The Eco-Score on the Open Food Facts app

The Eco-Score is, or will soon be, available in the apps of the launching partners. And Open Food Facts is a Wikipedia of foods that anyone can reuse freely and for free. The more than 100 applications that use the OFF database will also be able to display the calculated Eco-Score.

Compare the Eco-Score of products on the Open Food Facts site

The Open Food Facts website allows everyone to see and compare the Eco-Score of more than 750,000 food products sold in France. The results of each search show the nutritional quality with the Nutri-Score, ultra-processed foods with NOVA, and the environmental impact with the Eco-Score. The Eco-Score will be rolled out to other countries as soon as an applicable Eco-Score calculation is available.

The Eco-Score of ready meals
The Eco-Score of prepared meals on Open Food Facts


Classify and explore products by Eco-Score on Open Food Facts

It is also possible to sort and explore the products of any category by Eco-Score.

Products with the best Eco-Score Explore products by Eco-Score

And see at a glance the Eco-Score of the products of a category or a brand.

Eco-Score of ready meals
The Eco-Score of prepared meals. Click to see the products for each grade on Open Food Facts.

Obtain the details of the Eco-Score calculation for all products

For each product, a link allows you to display the complete details of the Eco-Score score calculation.

And if information is missing, anyone can add it: the manufacturer of the product but also all citizens committed to the climate, environmental protection and transparency.

Anyone can complete the information to calculate the Eco-Score


How the Eco-Score can encourage the improvement of products and the reduction of their environmental impacts

The Eco-Score has two levers of action:

  • With the Eco-Score, consumers can make a more informed choice by taking into account the environmental impact of products as a criterion of choice.
  • The Eco-Score also encourages manufacturers to improve their products so that they achieve a higher Eco-Score rating.

Manufacturers improving the Eco-Score of their products is the ultimate goal, as it will benefit all consumers.

The energy rating of household appliances has thus profoundly transformed the market (try to find a fridge rated E, or even D or C!). And the democratization of Nutri-Score has also encouraged many manufacturers to improve the nutritional quality of their products to obtain a better rating (to the point that some French manufacturers even brag about it on bus stops, such as Brossard for its Savane cake).

To encourage product improvements, our platform for producers automatically analyzes data provided by manufacturers to identify avenues for improvement. The platform thus identifies all the products that would obtain a better Nutri-Score score with a slight change in composition (a reduction in salt of 5% for example).

Soon, the platform will make it possible to suggest ways to reduce the ecological impact and obtain a better Eco-Score (for example by using a more recyclable plastic for packaging, or by replacing palm oil with another oil).



How can we find out more and how can we help us develop the Eco-Score?

Everyone is welcome to help us create more transparency, educate consumers, and encourage product improvement through Eco-Score.

The Eco-Score is still young and can certainly be improved. Given the climate and environmental emergency, however, it seems important to us to make it available now.

By working together, we will be able to gradually improve the Eco-Score, refine its formula, and gather the data necessary for its calculation.

Your feedback, observations and suggestions will therefore be very valuable.

Open Food Facts is a collaborative project supported by tens of thousands of volunteers and managed by a non-profit association with 3 employees.
You can help us at fund Open Food Facts 2023 budget and continue to develop the Eco-Score and many other projects to improve everyone's diet. Thank you! ❤️

Make a donation


Acknowledgments

Thanks to the teams of ADEME, l'INRAE and all Agribalyse partners for the constitution of this unique environmental database and its publication in open data.

Thank you to all those involved in creating a common Eco-Score.

Thanks to the organizers and volunteers of Data For Good who greatly improved the artificial intelligence algorithms of Open Food Facts.

Thanks to the AFNIC Foundation for its support for the implementation of the Eco-Score in Open Food Facts.

Thanks to Santé publique France (Public Health France) for its crucial support for the development of the platform for producers.

And thank you to all the participants in the Open Food Facts project who for more than 8 years have been promoting food transparency to improve everyone's diet!



References