Last June, at a round table organized by Keendoo, Vincent Colomb, in charge of environmental labelling at ADEME, gave an update on the timetable and calculation methods for the new environmental score for agri-food products.

New consumer expectations, new demands from certain distributors, application of the Agec and Climate & Resilience laws: food companies will be required to display the environmental score of their products in the short to medium term. What are we talking about? Where do we stand?

To provide an update on this topical issue, Vincent Colomb, in charge of the dossier, presented the general framework for calculating the new environmental score, at a round table organized by Keendoo atAgrovif last June. Entitled "Environmental labelling: where do we stand? What's at stake? What solutions?", the round table was moderated by Pierre Christen, a journalist and food industry expert. A replay of Vincent Colomb's talk is available here.

Environmental labelling: a challenge for public authorities

As part of the implementation of the 2021 Climate & Resilience Act, environmental labelling represents a major challenge for public authorities. According to ADEME, food accounts for 24% of the carbon impact of an average household in France. Consequently, the agri-food sector is a major contributor to achieving the targets to which France committed itself at COP21 in 2015. There are two levels to this challenge.

The first concerns consumers. The aim is to provide them with clear, easy-to-understand information on the environmental impact of products, so that they can make informed choices.

The second concerns the agri-food industry, and more broadly the upstream agricultural sectors. The aim is to encourage manufacturers to reduce the environmental impact of their products through eco-design initiatives.

Environmental labelling: which method?

While several environmental labelling initiatives have been launched since the Agec and Climate & Resilience Acts, the aim is to introduce a single environmental labelling system, shared by all, to provide clear information to consumers. This is the mission of ADEME, which published a first version of the calculation method last spring and is now finalizing the test phase.

The consolidated calculation method and display format will be announced in Q4 2023, for deployment on products from early 2024.

The methodological framework is based on life-cycle analysis (LCA) of products to assess their impact score, as required by law, weighted by additional criteria to obtain their environmental score.

Depending on the specificity of the data used to carry out these LCAs, it provides for three levels of display:

• The first level, known as the "basic model", is based on 5 or 6 key parameters that are simple and accessible to manufacturers (e.g. composition, packaging, type of manufacturing process). The other parameters have generic values derived from Agribalyse®.
• The second level, called "semi-specific", is calculated on 15 to 20 specific parameters and uses less generic data: product evaluation is more precise,
• The third level, called "specific", is based on a maximum number of product-specific parameters used to calculate LCAs and additional indicators.

What are the solutions for implementing environmental labelling in agri-food businesses?

Set up by ADEME, the Écobalyse® tool (beta version) enables companies to test this first-level display.

But to massively industrialize product environmental impact assessment and score calculations, manufacturers will need to adopt new tools. Various tools have been developed by private publishers, such as the Keendoo eco-design module.