Planet FWD debuts platform to cut environmental impact
Planet FWD recently launched a new suite of tools to assist CPG companies in measuring and decreasing environmental impact. The decarbonization emissions platform leverages AI to help lower carbon modeling costs and expedite decarbonization across several markets, including dietary supplements.
The company’s Product Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) tool allows consumer companies to understand product and ingredient-level emissions at a deeper level. This tool reduces the complexity of conducting a custom assessment by using AI and machine learning to measure thousands of products simultaneously. With its new LCA tool, the company can now quickly share customer supply chain data to companies without access to it. On average, Planet FWD said it can help brands reduce the carbon emissions by 35% per product.
Planet FWD’s proprietary, AI-powered decarbonization platform simplifies the process of measuring and mitigating a company’s climate footprint. Moving beyond average data and estimates, Planet FWD’s technology can rapidly model product-level emissions from farm to compost bin.
Measuring emissions
Emissions are broken down into three scopes: Scope 1 are direct emissions controlled by a company, whereas scope 2 and 3 are indirect emissions that are a consequence of the activities of the company, but occur from sources not controlled by the company.
Julia Collins, founder and CEO of Planet FWD, explained that the platform allows consumer companies to set net zero targets and reduce carbon emissions to meet their sustainability goals.
“As the first end-to-end climate solution for the food and beverage industry, we enable brands, manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, food service providers and retailers to not only measure their emissions across Scope 1, 2 and 3, but also reduce those impacts and make credible sustainability claims in the market.
“Ultimately our platform makes it much faster and more affordable for consumer companies to take climate action–whether you have 10 or 100,000 products,” Collins added.
Climate-conscious shoppers
California recently enacted two climate-related reporting statutes. Senate Bill 253 will require certain public and private entities doing business in California to make public disclosures of their scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. Senate Bill 261 will require certain public and private entities doing business in California to publicly report their climate-related risks and efforts to address them. These statutes expand the scope of companies covered by their requirement beyond those covered by the current Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed disclosure standards. A Crunchbase analysis shows that more than 8,000 companies may need to comply.
The bill's passage could have far reaching impacts, with nearly every large company in the US doing business in California having to report its emissions.
“These laws will greatly impact the way businesses will be required to disclose their climate impacts,” said Collins. “What’s more, consumers are demanding brands take action. Eighty-two percent of millennials and Gen-Zers believe brands should take more responsibility for fighting climate change. Market leaders in the supplement industry are now sharing their carbon footprints with customers through packaging, marketing and beyond. Supplement companies that don’t start to take their sustainability initiatives seriously run the risk of being left behind by climate-conscious shoppers.”
Serving the supplements market
Collins noted that we are living in a narrow window of opportunity where there is still some time for the dietary supplements industry to help stave off the worst effects of the climate crisis.
“Having already served multiple supplement companies like Ritual, our data is only going to grow and get stronger,” said Collins. “Our platform can help supplement companies better understand where their emissions are coming from, and what levers they can pull to lower their impact on the planet.”
