Anya Doherty
Founder and Managing Director, Foodsteps
A massive database with insights from trusted scientific sources is helping food industry leaders understand — and improve — how they impact the environment.
Anya Doherty believes that, generally, people are unaware of the food industry’s environmental impact. “Yet, food creates a third of global greenhouse gas emissions,” she notes. “It’s also the biggest cause of biodiversity loss.”
Without good data, food companies can’t reduce the cost of their transition to net zero.
Vast database enabling sustainable food systems
Worryingly, while she was researching sustainable food systems at the University of Cambridge in 2019, Doherty discovered that many food companies don’t truly understand their own operations’ impact on the planet, despite speaking of being sustainable. Realising this had to change, she founded Foodsteps — a UK-based company offering data and decarbonisation solutions for food businesses.
Carbon accounting for food companies is incredibly complex, admits Doherty. So, by giving firms easy access to Foodsteps’ vast database — featuring data and insights from a variety of trusted sources including academia, research bodies and industry — they can understand and assess their products’ and supply chain’s impact on the environment. Ultimately, this helps them make better choices, produce better products, improve sales and, crucially, create fewer emissions.
How good data can lower environmental impacts
“Without good data, food companies can’t reduce the cost of their transition to net zero,” explains Doherty. “They won’t understand if they need to change a particular ingredient, source or product packaging. They also run a risk if they start making changes without studying the right data and insights.”
Customers include leading food service businesses and food manufacturers. “For instance, one of the largest businesses we work with has used our data to understand the carbon footprint of over 30,000 recipes, which we’ve rated on an A (very low impact) to E (very high impact) scale,” she adds. “They can then work towards redeveloping menus for a lower overall impact.” For example, they can see what happens if they swap out 50% of beef for lentils in a meatball.
Moreover, businesses can use the company’s carbon labels so that shoppers can see the carbon impact of individual items. “It’s about giving businesses and consumers more knowledge,” says Doherty. “Because knowledge is power.”
