Image credit: carbon map
meet carbon mapis a new 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 like greenlee, sweep, persefoni and basin, Carbon Maps is not an exact competitor because it does not calculate a company’s carbon footprint 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 funding in a seed round. Briga and Samaipata — These two VC firms had already invested in Asdaghi’s previous startup. FoodChéri.
FoodChéri is a full-stack food delivery company that designs unique meals and sells directly to end customers with a focus on healthy foods.We also operate Season, a sister company of bulk delivery.startup is Acquired by Sodexo years ago.
“The day I left, I started working on food and health projects again,” Asdagi told me. “We wanted to make an impact, so we started looking back up the supply chain and looking at agriculture.”
Fortunately, Asdaghi isn’t the only company looking at the food industry’s supply chain. In France, several companies have started working. eco score With the public agency (ADEME) that oversees the project. 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 working on standardization — Product environmental footprint (PEF). European countries can create their own scoring systems based on these European standards. In short, food companies need good data about 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 whether 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 that helps 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 cooperation across the chain,” said Asdaghi.