Just Eat boosts sustainability drive with innovative carbon labelling trial

• In a first for a UK food delivery platform, Just Eat has teamed up with five restaurants in Brighton to launch a carbon labelling trial on their platform

• This will support consumers and restaurants to better understand the environmental impact of their food choices

• The trial will run for 12 weeks in partnership with My Emissions, with one brand expanding the trial nationwide

Just Eat, the UK’s leading food delivery platform, has launched a carbon labelling trial in Brighton in a first of its kind for a UK food delivery platform.

Alongside My Emissions, a leading provider of food carbon calculations and labelling, Just Eat is working with five restaurant partners for the next 12 weeks to display a ‘traffic light’ carbon rating next to main meals. The ratings take into account the farming, production, transport and packaging of the dishes. 

Participating restaurants will display a carbon label rated from A (Very Low carbon impact) to E (Very High carbon impact) by incorporating a traffic light colour system on their Just Eat page, meaning consumers will be able to better understand the carbon impact when choosing a meal on the app or web.

The trial is initially taking place with five restaurants in Brighton including Smoque Burger, No Catch, Brewdog, Fat Pizza and Fat Burgers and Desserts. Fat Pizza and Fat Burgers and Desserts are expanding the trial to over 40 stores nationwide on the Just Eat platform.

Just Eat estimates that 80 percent of the wider marketplace carbon footprint is generated by food and food production. The trial aims to address this by helping consumers better understand the environmental impact of their food choices and by supporting restaurant partners in offering more sustainable options.

As part of the trial, participating partners, representing a variety of cuisine types, are working with My Emissions to calculate the carbon footprint of their menu items. They have also received insights and tips on how they can reduce their carbon footprint. For example, No Catch’s Vegan Cod and Chips has 78.2% lower emissions than a traditional cod fish and chips meal. This saves the same emissions as one person travelling on the train between Brighton and London.* The feedback provided will help restaurants make informed decisions about the ingredients they use. The results of the trial will help Just Eat assess how the initiative could be scaled more widely.

Just Eat Takeaway.com is committed to supporting both restaurants and consumers to make more sustainable choices through collaborating with partners like My Emissions. In 2021, Just Eat Takeaway.com launched its Responsible Business Framework identifying key areas (Planet, Food, People & Society) to take positive action to drive sustainability across the industry. 

In the UK, as part of its mission to drive sustainability through the takeaway sector, Just Eat has launched numerous campaigns. This includes Just Eat and Notpla’s ongoing partnership to provide seaweed based compostable packaging to restaurants. Just Eat also conducted research with Hubbub into food waste, resulting in a trial with restaurants which gave customers the option of a smaller chip ‘waste-less’ portion size.

Read more about the carbon labelling trial at: http://www.just-eat.co.uk/explore/sustainability/introducing-carbon-labelling/

*based on 2022 DEFRA Greenhouse Gas reporting guidelines and factors, using a distance of 81 km from London Victoria station to Brighton station and giving an emissions value of 2.88 kgCO2e