From pesto to sausages, supermarkets are going to start 'green scoring' your weekly shop 🛒 It is the first easy-to-use method of calculating the impact of products with multiple ingredients
Each product was assessed using information pulled from its ingredients list. The final score given to a product takes into account greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and nutrient run-off.than the meat option they mimic. Vegan sausages, for example, have an environmental impact 90 per cent lower than beef sausages.
But the database also throws up some surprises. Granola, for example, was in the top third of products with the highest environmental impact across an entire supermarket range, while pesto made with nuts also has a high impact. That is because nuts such as almonds, pistachios and pine nuts have a high water footprint, and are often grown in drought-prone regions such as California.
Other products can have a high environmental impact score because of where they are grown. For example, if areas of rainforest are cleared to grow coffee or chocolate,Dr Clark said the main weakness with the current database was that this kind of sourcing information is not publicly available. But retailers could add this information into the database before rolling out green food labels in shops, he pointed out.