Il Food is a major cause of climate change, responsible for over a quarter of our carbon emissions. Not all foods, however, are equally guilty. How to understand if the food we buy is sustainable? He thinks about answering Setai, the application that helps improve eating habits and learn about the environmental impact of purchased food. A project that started in the United Kingdom and is arriving in Italy, thanks to the intuition of two young Venetians, Andrea Longo and Edoardo Danieli, and thanks to the scientific contribution of eAmbiente, a Venetian environmental and energy engineering and consulting company founded in 2003.
The production of some foods, such as beef and cheese, releases large quantities of gases into the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide and others. These are responsible for man-made climate change. Reason why many have converted to a vegetarian or vegan diet.
So, the importance of environmental sustainability it has become a real emergency. And this app was created with the aim of supporting the global movement in defense of the environment and, together, involving the individual to give his personal contribution to such an important cause. In our own small way we can all adopt correct behaviors to limit the environmental impact and Setai was born with this aim.
The app is very simple to use: the smartphone camera scans the product barcode and thanks to the app the health assessment, i.e. the quality of the nutritional values and ingredients, and those environmental, or its carbon footprint: the greenhouse gas emissions generated throughout the production cycle: from the agricultural phase to arrival on the supermarket shelf. A way to help consumers make better choices not only for their own well-being but also for that of the planet.
Both indices are represented, numerically, with a ranging scale by 1 to 10 and, chromatically, with a grid that goes from red to bright green. You can also track your weekly, monthly and yearly scores to monitor your progress, and compare your results with those of other users, in order to create a real community. Furthermore, the app will also offer a healthiness assessment of the single product and of its overall expenditure. A way to help consumers make better choices not only for their own well-being but also for that of the planet.
Ma How do you get environmental impact data? Each finished product is assigned a reference category which has its own carbon dioxide emissions at the national average level. These data are found in some databases certified by the European Union and by major universities. From here we start and correctives are applied based on the transport method used, the origin of the ingredient, the level of industrial processing, to arrive at a final evaluation for each individual food product sold in supermarkets. With the application, it will be possible to evaluate alternatives with a lower environmental impact, track carbon dioxide consumption and invest one euro to be able to plant one or more trees.
The app is already available for iOS and Android. The next objective will be to implement the data also indicating the expenditure of water necessary for the production of the product and any chemical products used, so as to provide an increasingly complete profile on the eco-sustainability of what we bring to our tables.
"If all Italians used Setai to establish the carbon footprint of food products, everyone would be sensitized to purchasing - he said Gabriella Chiellino, President of eAmbiente, partner of Setai -. For us it is a great technical and educational investment and we have been working on it for years thanks to the enthusiasm of Andrea and Edoardo who believed in their idea between London and Venice and came to involve us. Experience, competence and youthful passion are the right mix to respond to the ecological transition in a concrete and pragmatic way".
“It is incredible that today consumers are not yet aware of the gigantic impact that food production has on global warming – he underlined Edward Danieli -. Emissions deriving from the production of food exceed 25% of the total emissions produced by man. There is also a strong difference in emissions between sustainable and non-sustainable producers. The good news, therefore, is that making sustainable choices costs nothing, you just need to be informed".
Setai wants to make society aware of the effect that our purchasing decisions have on the planet and to establish itself as a point of reference for companies that want to show the environmental impact data of their products on the label.
