At this year’s NBJ Summit, happening in Southern California from July 29-August 1st, attendees will enjoy their usual networking, education, and golf tournament, but will also see something new at the daily buffet. HowGood, an independent research organization and sustainability software platform, will be providing a carbon footprint for all the food options. Attendees will see both a number representing the kilograms of CO2 emitted for each menu item, and additional context for the number, for example if the carbon footprint is low or high.
HowGood’s founding principle is to provide transparent, actionable data for food companies to source ingredients, formulate products, and report on their impact with sustainability in mind. Their accuracy comes from the power of AI coupled with a proprietary database of 90,000 agricultural emissions factors, including source crops of every ingredient in the food system, different iterations of where a crop was grown, what certifications and growing practices were likely used, and more. HowGood’s software has assessed over 3.9 million products and only needs a recipe to generate an estimated carbon footprint. HowGood’s methodology was also recently certified by the Carbon Trust, a global climate consultancy, and is the only carbon footprint automation platform for the food industry to be certified by the organization. As consumers and regulators are increasingly scrutinizing corporate greenwashing, this certification gives brands heightened confidence when highlighting HowGood scores to consumers and reporting bodies.
The overarching goal for providing carbon footprints at the NBJ Summit is twofold: first, HowGood hopes to speak to attendees as individual end-consumers. Second, with an attendee list encompassing the movers and shakers within the nutrition industry, HowGood wants to show how easy it is to get insight into carbon footprints and effect change in their own
organizations. Consumers of nutrition products not only want products that are good for them, but that also provide holistic benefits through the supply chain. NBJ Summit is thus the perfect venue for this important conversation.
Throughout the conference, HowGood representatives will be speaking with attendees and hope to receive feedback during and after the event. In other institutional settings where HowGood has partnered with food service providers over a longer time span to provide carbon footprints, they have seen consumers switching to more climate-friendly choices.
While HowGood’s software provides insight into holistic sustainability metrics, such as water consumption and labor practices, carbon footprints will be the focus at NBJ Summit. Curious to see HowGood’s Sustainability Estimates in action? Check them out on Beacon Discovery. Will you be at the NBJ Summit? Be sure to take note of the carbon footprints and share your insights with the HowGood and NBJ teams.
