GreenSwapp Wants to Clarify the Climate Impact of a Bag of Chips as Easy as Snapping a Photo
Although the climate impact of our food has finally made the big stage as a topic at the world’s most prestigious conference, the average joe has no idea how good or bad that bag of sheets or can of soda is for the environment.
A Dutch startup called GreenSwapp wants to change that by making information about the climate impact of almost any CPG product instantly available to anyone using its technology.
The Amsterdam-based company started as an online grocery app for climate-friendly products, but has recently focused on building a climate impact data platform for both consumers and companies. To that end, the company released a new scanning tool at CES that assigns an instant score (low, average, or high) to almost any packaged food product when the product’s barcode is scanned with a smartphone.
Here’s how it works: Curious about the climate impact of a yogurt bath? Go to the GreenSwapapp website (www.greenswapp.com) with a mobile browser, and at the top of the page, click the barcode scan icon. Your phone will ask if scan.greensapp.com can use your camera. Click yes and scan.
Once the product is scanned, GreenSwapp will show a score and an estimate of your daily carbon footprint. Below that, you’ll see the difference in “depth of the deep climate” that shows where that carbon came from.
So how does GreenSapp achieve all this? According to the company’s CEO Ajay Varadharajan, they look at the carbon footprint of each food along every part of the product’s journey to our plates.
“We go through the entire journey of every food product, the impact of processing, the impact of transportation, the impact of packaging, and we show it as one number in one color so that the consumer can understand whether it is good or bad,” he said.
While the web tool is something I’m sure some climate-conscious shoppers will save as a browser favorite, I’d be more likely to make GreenSwapp part of my daily routine if it were a separate app or integrated as a feature in one of my online grocery apps. Although GreenSwapp’s current app is only available for grocery shopping in the Netherlands, the company has an open API that any online grocery or delivery company can use to integrate Greenswapp data into their offerings.
But what will they do? While most consumers don’t provide climate change data, my guess is that it’s only a matter of time. There is already discussion of having climate impact data on food labels (and some brands have already tried), and my guess is that at some point, progressive states like California and Washington State will force the hand of CPG companies and retailers, as they did with regard to nutrition and calorie labeling for food service.
If and when that happens, GreenSwapp may be well-placed to fulfill Varadharajan’s vision of making his technology the ‘Fitbit of sustainability.’
You can view a demo of the GreenSwap web tool below.
