Meet Carbon Maps, a new French startup that has raised $4.3 million (€4 million) just a few weeks after its launch. The company is building a software-as-a-service platform for the food industry to track the environmental impact of each of the products in their range. The platform can be used as a basis for eco-ratings.
While there are some carbon accounting startups like Greenly, Sweep, Persefoni, and Watershed, Carbon Maps isn’t an exact competitor as it doesn’t calculate a company’s carbon emissions as a whole. It also doesn’t focus exclusively on CO2 emissions. Carbon Maps focuses on the food industry and assesses the environmental impact of products – not companies.
The company, co-founded by Patrick Asdaghi, Jérémie Wainstain and Estelle Huynh, managed to set up a seed round with Breega and Samaipata – these two VC firms previously invested in Asdaghi’s previous startup FoodChéri.
FoodChéri is a full-stack food delivery company that designs its own meals and sells them directly to end customers, with an important focus on healthy eating. It also operates Seazon, a sister batch shipping company. The startup was acquired by Sodexo a few years ago.
“The day I left, I started working on nutrition and health projects again,” Asdaghi told me. “I wanted to make a difference, so I started moving up the supply chain and getting involved in farming.”
And the good news is that Asdaghi isn’t the only one looking at the food industry supply chain. In France, some companies started working on an eco-score, with a public authority (ADEME) overseeing the project. It is a life cycle assessment that results in a letter rating from A to E.
While very few brands put these letters on their labels, chances are good-rated companies will be using the eco-score as a selling point for years to come.
However, these ratings could spread further as regulation is still evolving. The European Union is even working on a standard – the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). European countries can then create their own rating systems based on these European criteria, which means food companies need good data on their supply chains.
“The key element of the new eco-score, which will be forthcoming, is that there will be some variation within a product category as the ingredients and cultivation methods are different,” Asdaghi said. “It will take into account the carbon impact, but also biodiversity, water use and animal welfare.”
For example, when looking at ground beef, it’s extremely important to know whether farmers are using soy from Brazil or grass to feed their cattle.
“We don’t want to create the ratings. We want to develop the tools that help with calculations – a kind of SAP,” said Asdaghi.
So far Carbon Maps is working with two companies on pilot programs as it will take a lot of work to cover every branch in the food industry. The startup creates models with as many criteria as possible to calculate the impact of each criterion. It uses data from standardized sources such as GHG Protocol, IPCC, ISO 14040 and 14044.
The company targets food brands because they design the recipes and choose their suppliers. Finally, Carbon Maps hopes that everyone in the supply chain will use their platform in one way or another.
“You can’t have a real climate strategy if you don’t work together across the chain,” Asdaghi said.
Source: techcrunch.com
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