Meet Carbon Maps, a new French startup that raised 4.3 million dollars (4 million euros) just weeks after its creation. The company is building a software-as-a-service platform for the food industry so it can track the environmental impact of each of its products in its range. The platform can be used as a basis for ecological ratings.
While there are plenty of carbon accounting startups like Greenly, Sweep, Persefoni, and Watershed, Carbon Maps isn’t an exact contender because it doesn’t calculate a company’s carbon emissions as a whole. Nor does it focus exclusively on carbon emissions. Carbon Maps focuses on the food industry and assesses the environmental impact of products, not companies.
Co-founded by Patrick Asdaghi, Jérémie Wainstain and Estelle Huynh, the company managed to raise a funding round with Breega and Samaipata – these two venture capital firms had already invested in Asdaghi’s previous startup, FoodChéri.
FoodChéri is a complete food delivery company that designs its own meals and sells them directly to end customers with an emphasis on healthy foods. It also operates Seazon, a sister company for batch deliveries. The startup was acquired by Sodexo a few years ago.
“The day I left, I started working on food and health projects again,” Asdaghi told me. “I wanted to make an impact, so I started going up the supply chain and getting into agriculture.”
And the good news is that Asdaghi isn’t the only one with an interest in the food industry supply chain. In France, some companies have started working on an eco-score with a public agency (ADEME) piloting the project. This is a life cycle analysis that leads to an alphabetical rating from A to E.
While very few brands put these letters on their labels, chances are that companies with good ratings will use the eco-score as a selling point in the years to come.
But these ratings could become even more prevalent as regulations continue to evolve. 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 that food companies will need good data on their supply chains.
“The key element of the upcoming new eco-score is that there will be differences within a product category because the ingredients and cultivation methods are different,” Asdaghi said. “It will take into account the carbon impact, but also biodiversity, water consumption and animal welfare.”
For example, when looking at ground beef, it is extremely important to know whether farmers use Brazilian soybeans or grass to feed livestock.
“We don’t want to create the rankings. We want to create the tools that make calculations easier – a kind of SAP,” Asdaghi said.
So far, Carbon Maps is working with two companies on pilot programs, as it will take a ton of work to cover every vertical in the food industry. The startup creates models with as many criteria as possible to calculate the impact of each criteria. 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 select their suppliers. Eventually, Carbon Maps hopes that everyone in the supply chain will use its platform in some way.
“You can’t have a real climate strategy if you don’t have collaboration across the chain,” Asdaghi said.
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