If you've ever wondered how much carbon footprint each food item on your table makes, an Irish startup called Evocco promises to deliver exactly that.
Evocco is a smartphone app that assists you in making more environmentally friendly food choices. Users can monitor the climate impact of their food purchases in order to get the most nutritious food with the least amount of environmental effect.
Users take a snapshot of their shopping receipt and use the Evocco app to identify the food items by reading the printed text and machine learning. It then measures the carbon footprint based on the location of the store and by comparing the type, weight and origin of a food to a database.
The database is maintained by Eaternity, a Swiss life cycle assessment company. If a receipt doesn't have sufficient data, Eaternity offers an approximation based on comparable goods and reference points such as national import and export figures, which assess where a commodity is likely to have originated.
Hugh Weldon and Ahmad Mu'azzam, the founders, came up with the concept while studying mechanical engineering at Trinity College in Dublin. The concept arose from their intention to minimize their environmental impact and their personal dissatisfaction at finding it impossible to do so.
In addition to being a personal shopping app, the company is working on a digital tool that will be sold to grocery stores, e-commerce sites, and delivery apps that will monitor the climate effect of a product's journey through the supply chain.
Aside from the immediate impact of offsetting groceries, Evocco aims to increase public awareness of the carbon footprint of various foods.
Some factors are well established - for example, animal products are usually more resource intensive than most plant-based alternatives, and transporting products raises their carbon footprint - but the app also assists in recognizing other important variations between items, such as seasonality or whether refrigeration was needed during the journey to market. It also provides advice on how to reduce shopping-related pollution.
With the first cohort of users in Ireland and the U.K. already enjoying the benefits of the app, the focus is now to grow user numbers and secure investment from angels and venture capitalists.
Evocco hopes to launch in the U.S. by the end of this year.
