Carbon Maps is a French startup that has raised $4.3 million (€4 million) in just a few weeks. The company is building his software-as-a-service platform for the food industry, so it can track the environmental impact of each product in its lineup. This platform can be used as a basis for eco-ratings.
There are quite a few carbon accounting startups such as Greenly, Sweep, Persefoni and Watershed, but Carbon Maps is not an exact competitor as it does not calculate companies’ carbon emissions as a whole. We are not just focusing on carbon emissions either. Carbon Maps focuses on the food industry and assesses the environmental impact of products rather than companies.
The company, co-founded by Patrick Asdaghi, Jérémie Wainstain and Estelle Huynh, was able to raise seed rounds from Breega and Samaipata.
FoodChéri is a full-stack food delivery company that designs unique meals and sells directly to end customers with a focus on healthy foods. It also operates a bulk shipping sister company, Season. This startup was acquired by Sodexo a few years ago.
“The day I left, I started working on food and health projects again,” Asdagi told me. rice field.”
Fortunately, Asdaghi isn’t the only company looking at the food industry’s supply chain. In France, some companies have started working on environmental scores together with the public body that oversees the project (ADEME). This is a life cycle assessment that leads to a letter rating from A to E.
Few brands will put these letters on their labels, but reputable companies are likely to use eco-scores as a selling point in the years to come.
However, as regulations are still evolving, these ratings may become more prevalent. The European Union is also working on a standard, the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). European countries can create their own scoring systems based on these European standards. In short, food companies need better data on their supply chains.
“A key element of the new eco-scores to be released is that there are some differences within product categories due to different raw materials and farming methods,” said Asdaghi. “We take into account biodiversity, water consumption and animal welfare as well as carbon impacts.”
For example, when looking at ground beef, it is very important to know if the farmer is using Brazilian soybeans or pasture grass in their cattle feed.
“I don’t want to create a rating. I want to create a tool to help with the calculations, a kind of SAP,” says Asdaghi.
So far, Carbon Maps is working with two companies on pilot programs. This is because it takes a huge amount of work to cover each sector of the food industry. The startup builds a model with as many criteria as possible to calculate the impact of each criterion. Use data from standardized sources such as GHG Protocol, IPCC, ISO 14040, 14044.
The company targets food brands to design recipes and select suppliers. Ultimately, Carbon Maps wants everyone across his chain of supply to use its platform in some way.
“You cannot have a true climate strategy without some kind of collaboration across the chain,” said Asdaghi.
