Climate-Friendly Grocery Shopping

Swedish food brand Felix has opened a pop-up shop called The Climate Store whereby customers pay for products with carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) instead of standard currency, and all products are priced based on their climate impact – the higher the impact, the higher the price. This brand asserts that in order to halve their carbon impact, costumers should stick to a budget of 18.9kg of CO2e per week.

This is part of a wider effort by the brand to highlight the climate impact of consumers’ dietary choices. In October, Felix began stamping products in its line that are better for the climate with a ‘Low Impact’ label. Read Quorn Introduces Carbon-Footprint Labelling and Unilever Adopts On-Pack Carbon Labelling for further examples of this thinking.

Meanwhile, in June, Danish grocery store Coop unveiled an app that allows shoppers to track the estimated carbon impact of their shop. The tool takes into account carbon released as a result of production, processing, transportation and any food waste produced from field to shop. The app will also offer advice on how to change their grocery shopping habits to reduce their own carbon footprint. The app also allows shoppers to compare the footprint of their shop to that of the average shopper’s basket. 

These concepts offer clever ways to help consumers reduce their personal carbon impact and make greener choices at the point of sale. For more on how consumers are tweaking their diets to become more climate-friendly, read The New Food Anxiety: Unpacking Post-Covid Diet Culture.