Mash Direct help consumers make sustainable choices with Eco Labelling

Mash Direct help consumers make sustainable choices with Eco Labelling
Mash Direct Eco Score Launch_

Mash Direct, the award-winning ‘field-to-fork’ vegetable accompaniments brand, has partnered with non-profit organisation Foundation Earth  to launch a new line of ecological labelling. Eco labelling advises on the environmental impact of a product as a whole, it is designed to allow consumers to easily make more sustainable choices whilst shopping.

Mash Direct are one of the first companies to have signed up to this pilot scheme, hoping to drive awareness and lead change within the food and drink sector and to share a vision for the future encouraging more environmentally friendly innovation from food producers and sustainable buying choices.

Foundation Earth

Foundation Earth has brought together two of the world’s leading systems (Mondra and EIT**) for measuring the environmental impact of an individual food product and communicating the information clearly and simply via a traffic light style system to consumers via a front-of-pack score.

The new labelling is currently applied to five of Mash Direct’s popular products, Mashed Potato, Champ, Carrots & Parsnips, Mashed Turnip and Colcannon. The scoring system is based on the individual products Carbon Output (g CO2 eq), Water usage, Water Pollution and Bio-diversity impact. The brand aims to roll out the packaging to other products next year, as part of the company’s wider sustainability ambitions.

Scoring system

The scoring system is uniquely designed to analyse the whole life-cycle of an individual product, such as Mashed Potato, as opposed to using secondary data to estimate the environmental impact of an entire product group. This will allow customers to directly compare the sustainable credentials of two competitor products to make an informed decision whilst they do their grocery shopping.

Speaking about the launch, Jack Hamilton, CEO Mash Direct said “We are excited to receive 4 A and 1 B rating on selected products in our range, this is a very positive new addition to our packaging. It pushes the boundaries for us as a company too, as it drives us to be as environmentally sustainable as we possibly can across all aspects of our product lifecycle. The advantage for us is that all our products are grown and manufactured on site ‘from field to fork’ so we have full control over that element of their journey. Our ambition is to improve on our sustainability year on year and we will publish our sustainability report annually to track where we are making progress as well as where we need to make further improvements, we will then have our information independently assessed to ensure that we are measuring accurately. This will ensure that there is provenance and transparency in the food system, driving positive change not only at Mash Direct but also, we hope, with others”.

Cliona Howie, CEO, Foundation Earth comments: “Its motivating to work alongside forward-thinking brands like Mash Direct who are one of the first to deliver our front-of-pack Eco Impact scores allowing consumers to quickly and simply understand the impact linked to their food choices. Momentum is building quickly, and scores will start appearing on products from more companies soon.”

**EIT – European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) is a system devised by an EU-funded EIT Food consortium of Belgium’s Leuven University and Spanish research agency AZTI.  Mondra – is a data-driven insights platform that supports food system players to meet their carbon neutrality goals