Today, HowGood, a SaaS data platform with the world's largest database on food
and personal care product sustainability, announced the integration of One
Planet Business for Biodiversity’s (OP2B) new
Regenerative Agriculture framework. The framework adds to the metrics available
for food brands and suppliers to measure product impact in HowGood’s
sustainability software, Latis.
With more than 33,000 ingredients, chemicals and materials assessed, HowGood’s
Latis database helps brands, retailers and restaurants to quickly determine the
impact of any ingredient or product against key environmental and social impact
metrics including greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, labor risk, animal
welfare and more. Latis customers include the majority of brands within Danone
North America — one of the Top 15 food and beverage companies in the US. In
October 2020, Chipotle became the first restaurant chain to partner with
HowGood, when it launched its Real Foodprint
platform
— through which Chipotle customers can access sustainability data for the
ingredients in their favorite dishes. HowGood aggregates information from
Chipotle’s suppliers and over 450 unique data sources — including peer-reviewed
scientific literature, industry findings, and research from government and
non-governmental organizations — to evaluate the average impact of Chipotle’s 53
real ingredients on the environment and animal welfare.
Conventional agriculture is a primary source of environmental degradation,
accounting for 70 percent of global fresh water use and a third of global
greenhouse gas emissions, and is associated with 80 percent of global
deforestation — not to mention the depletion of nutrients from our
food.
OP2B, a coalition of leading global businesses committed to transforming
agriculture to protect and restore biodiversity, recently launched a
Regenerative Agriculture framework to enable companies to effect positive
environmental change and to provide consistency across the industry when scaling
up regenerative ag practices — a slowly but steadily growing movement that sees
farmers incorporating techniques that restore soil
health,
reversing the degradation and nutrient depletion caused by decades of subsidized
monoculture farming — throughout value chains. Not only are more and more
organizations looking to regenerative ag to optimize their
food
and textile supply
chains,
the carbon-sequestration capacity of regeneratively farmed soil is being touted
as one of our most promising solutions to the climate
crisis.
Now, HowGood customers will be able to measure their products against eight
additional, science-backed impact indicators outlined in the OP2B framework:
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soil organic carbon content;
-
blue water withdrawals;
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number of crops per hectare per crop cycle;
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percentage of natural habitats;
-
pesticide usage – Environmental Impact
Quotient;
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fertiliser usage – Nitrogen Use Efficiency;
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farmer household annual income; and
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key social indicators for farm community.
With this information, global brands and retailers using HowGood’s Latis
platform will be able to make changes to product development at the ingredient
and supplier level, to improve product impact using uniform metrics and thus
contribute to a global agricultural transition.
“We are delighted with HowGood’s decision to adopt and implement our
Regenerative Agriculture framework in their Latis platform,” said Florence
Jeantet, Managing Director at OP2B. “This decision will certainly facilitate and accelerate the uptake of regenerative practices within corporations' supply chains and contribute to our common goals of providing consistency across the industry — driving the deployment of regenerative farming practices, informing corporate strategies, and measuring impact in a clear and transparent way.”
“OP2B has provided the industry with critical guidance for improving our
agricultural systems and restoring soil health. The integration of their
Regenerative Agriculture framework into Latis is a great step forward in helping
the global retailers and brands who use our platform to accurately measure and
improve product sustainability,” said Alexander Gillett, co-founder and CEO
of HowGood. “We’re excited to be able to provide our customers with access to
OP2B’s standardized metrics and help encourage the transition to regenerative
agricultural practices within corporate value chains. The better companies
understand the impact of their products at a micro-level, the more effective
changes they can make to reduce harmful practices and bring transparency to the
food industry.”
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Oct 28, 2021 11am EDT / 8am PDT / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST