Food accounts for approximately one-fifth* of the carbon footprint of Finnish households. Individuals can reduce their consumption-related climate impact through the choices they make.
“Combatting climate change requires actions on many levels: the society, companies and individuals must all act. K Group is committed to creating versatile solutions to combat climate change, and we also want to help our customers make more environmentally-friendly everyday choices. The carbon footprint calculator in K-Ostokset is an excellent tool for this and one that our customers have been hoping for”, says Ari Akseli, President of K Group’s grocery trade division.
The carbon footprint calculator shows the ‘climate level’ of your food purchases: the more environmentally friendly your choices, the higher the level. It also allows you to examine the carbon footprint of different product categories: initially it estimates the footprint of 30 top product categories, including milk, pasta, coffee, vegetables, fruit, fresh fish and beef. 10 additional product categories will be added during spring 2020, and the calculator will be developed further as available data on e.g. the climate impact of Finnish products becomes more precise.
The calculator is based on climate impact assessments by Luke, which are based on scientific research and other scientific materials such as the latest research literature and data banks.
“K Group’s carbon footprint calculator supports environmentally friendly choices by offering sufficiently accurate category-level information on products. However, we are not yet at a stage where we would have reliable comparable data on each individual product,” notes Merja Saarinen, Senior Scientist at Luke.
The new carbon footprint calculator is part of K Group’s K-Ostokset service, which can be accessed with the K-Ruoka mobile app or at k-ruoka.fi/ostokset. K-Ostokset is a data-based service that allows K-Plussa customers to track what they are buying from K Group’s grocery stores and helps them make more conscientious choices. The service also shows customers how much local Finnish products they are buying and suggests additional Finnish products to buy. Customers can set themselves a target for buying Finnish products or for the climate level of their purchases, and monitor weekly progress in meeting the targets.
“K-Ostokset has quickly become very popular, especially the feature for tracking the level of purchases of local Finnish food. There are over 70,000 service users and the number is constantly growing. Our customers find it useful to be able to track how much money they are spending and what they are really buying in the grocery store. K-Ostokset allows them to examine the impact their food purchases have on their own wellbeing and the world. We are thrilled to now be able to also offer a carbon footprint calculator as part of the service,” says Minna Vakkilainen, K Group’s Head of Customer Data.
* Carbon footprint and raw material requirement of public procurement and household consumption in Finland – Results obtained using the ENVIMAT-model (Reports of the Finnish Environment Institute 15/2019): https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/300737
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