Carbon Maps helps the meals business cut back their local weather influence • TechCrunch

Meet Carbon Maps, a brand new French startup that raised $4.3 million (€4 million) just some weeks after its inception. The corporate is constructing a software-as-a-service platform for the meals business in order that they will monitor the environmental influence of every of their merchandise of their lineup. The platform can be utilized as a foundation for eco scores.

Whereas there are fairly a number of carbon accounting startups like Greenly, Sweep, Persefoni and Watershed, Carbon Maps isn’t an actual competitor because it doesn’t calculate an organization’s carbon emissions as an entire. It doesn’t deal with carbon emissions solely both. Carbon Maps focuses on the meals business and evaluates the environmental influence of merchandise — not firms.

Co-founded by Patrick Asdaghi, Jérémie Wainstain and Estelle Huynh, the corporate managed to boost a seed spherical with Breega and Samaipata — these two VC companies already invested in Asdaghi’s earlier startup, FoodChéri.

FoodChéri is a full-stack meals supply firm that designs its personal meals and sells them instantly to finish prospects with an necessary deal with wholesome meals. It additionally operates Seazon, a sister firm for batch deliveries. The startup was acquired by Sodexo a number of years in the past.

“On the day that I left, I began engaged on meals and well being initiatives once more,” Asdaghi advised me. “I needed to make an influence, so I began shifting up the availability chain and taking a look at agriculture.”

And the excellent news is that Asdaghi isn’t the one one trying on the provide chain of the meals business. In France, some firms began engaged on an eco-score with a public company (ADEME) overseeing the venture. It’s a life cycle evaluation that results in a letter ranking from A to E.

Whereas only a few manufacturers put these letters on their labels, chances are high firms which have good scores will use the eco-score as a promoting level within the coming years.

However these scores may turn into much more widespread as regulation continues to be evolving. The European Union is even engaged on a typical — the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). European international locations can then create their very own scoring methods based mostly on these European standards, that means that meals firms will want good information on their provide chains.

“The important thing aspect within the new eco-score that’s developing is that there can be some variations inside a product class as a result of substances and farming strategies are totally different,” Asdaghi mentioned. “It’s going to take into accounts the carbon influence, but in addition biodiversity, water consumption and animal welfare.”

For example, if you have a look at floor beef, it’s extraordinarily necessary to know whether or not farmers are utilizing soy from Brazil or grass to feed cattle.

“We don’t need to create the scores. We need to create the instruments that assist with calculations — a kind of SAP,” Asdaghi mentioned.

To date, Carbon Maps is working with two firms on pilot applications because it’s going to require a ton of labor to cowl every vertical within the meals business. The startup creates fashions with as many standards as potential to calculate the influence of every standards. It makes use of information from standardized sources like GHG Protocol, IPCC, ISO 14040 and 14044.

The corporate targets meals manufacturers as a result of they design the recipes and choose their suppliers. Ultimately, Carbon Maps hopes that everyone throughout the availability chain goes to make use of its platform in a technique or one other.

“You may’t have a real local weather technique for those who don’t have some collaboration throughout the chain,” Asdaghi mentioned.