Saif Hameed [00:00:07]:
You know, around six years ago, I started walking into the office, I think six, seven years ago, and I had this weird potion that I would bring and put next to the desk and I would just sort of be slurping it as I went through my workday. And I missed lunch routinely every day. And people around me would look at me and wonder what this thing was that I was slurping. And I tried to tell them that it was like a meal in a shake. And they were like, is it a protein shake? And I'm like, no, it's not a protein shake. It's an actual meal. Look, it has all the stuff I need in my full fledged meal. And of course, for anyone following the episode link, that was Huel.
Saif Hameed [00:00:44]:
It was the early days, I think, in the UK. So 2016, 2017 of Huel hitting the scene. And it was one of these sort of revolutions in just how you think about your work day and working food and nutrition into your work day, at least for me. I'm super excited for us to be talking about Huel in a little more depth today. I'm also really excited that Altruistiq actually works with Huel. And so several years later, we're able to be a part of the Huel story. Today, we're going to be zooming in on product carbon footprints and how to use them effectively. I want to welcome Jess to the show.
Saif Hameed [00:01:18]:
Jess, thank you for joining us. It's really great to have you on board.
Jessica Sansom [00:01:22]:
Thanks very much for having me. Super excited to have this conversation. I love talking about product carbon footprints.
Saif Hameed [00:01:29]:
Fantastic. Jess, we're really going to get into that here. This podcast is, as all our listeners know, this is for sustainability professionals. We try and format this to be as useful and as actionable as possible. And our listeners feedback is that they love when we go really deep into a topic and give them tips and tricks on how to implement that in their own journey on sustainability. So, Jess, Huel's been working with Altruistiq for nearly a year now. I think, actually it's pretty crazy that it's been that already.
Jessica Sansom [00:01:56]:
Well, there's a lot of chats in the beginning to make sure that you guys were exactly what we wanted, and then we worked out that you were. And, yeah, now it's been a while now.
Saif Hameed [00:02:05]:
Fantastic. Well, we're super excited that we've made it this far. We wanted to spotlight how you're using data to minimize environmental impact. But first, I want to maybe just bring Huel a little more to life for our listeners. And so for those that know Hula little B for its nutritional products. But I really want to focus on sustainability and maybe just get a sense from you on why is Huel a sustainability native? Like, why is this talk really core to the brand and really core to how you position in the market and how you think about value?
Jessica Sansom [00:02:33]:
Okay, that's a big question. So, first of all, I just want to say I love the fact that you called Huel a potion. I mean, we've been called lots of different things, like space food, and, you know, meal replacements and protein shakes. I don't think I've ever heard Huel called a potion before. So I'm going to add that to my list. I mean, nutritionally complete food, yes, but potion, that's a new one. Huel is when it comes to sustainability, because I worked in sustainability and food for a really long time, and then Huel came to me and said, look, we'd really like you to come and join us and see what you can do. And I was suddenly really excited.
Jessica Sansom [00:03:11]:
And I was really excited because it brings together that health and sustainability piece in food, which was something that I'd really been looking for, because there's lots of foods that themselves are produced. Well, you know, that the companies that are responsible for them have looked at, oh, how are we doing on agriculture, and how much energy do we use in our production and all the rest? But the food itself doesn't necessarily give you a health solution, even though it's produced sustainably and with fuel. What we had the opportunity to do was to not only give people a health solution, because all of the meals are designed to be nutritionally complete, they're designed to have all the right mix of macro and micronutrients and so on. But that we could do that in such a way that was then going to be, well, not perfect. Nobody's perfect from a sustainability point of view, but that was going to also be designed to offer the lowest impact from a sustainability perspective. So that's really what we're trying to do. What we're trying to say is, let's give people the most convenient, easy nutrition, like you having your lunch break, and do it in such a way that it has the lowest possible impact. And that is part of the idea of the brand right from the very beginning.
Jessica Sansom [00:04:24]:
And then they said to me, okay, so this is what we want to do. We want to have the lowest impact food. What do we have to do? You know, how do we have to do that? And that's what we've spent loads of time working on. So I'm super happy to go into all that. But, you know, one of the main commitments that we had, and one of the reasons why we were so desperate to start working with Altruistiq was that we said, okay, we know that food has a huge footprint when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. We know that the food systems response responsible for a third. I still can't quite get over that. Not a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and yet we're doing so little about it.
Jessica Sansom [00:05:01]:
So what is the ideal meal that would actually allow us to reduce climate change to one and a half degrees? So what's that footprint? And how can we make sure that every single fuel meal fits underneath a one and a half degrees designed carbon footprint?
Saif Hameed [00:05:19]:
And Jess, if I could just deep dive into that a bit, because what you're describing in terms of understanding the footprint of an individual meal and really even an individual stock keeping unit is already a fair way ahead of what most businesses are starting to think about now, which is scope three, greenhouse gas inventory as a business, etcetera. And I think the reason that it makes sense for you to be focusing on this is, as you say, it's really core to the brand and the brand ethos and what the brand stands for. I had a very similar conversation with Sean at Oatly, which is another brand that identifies itself from the ground up as a sustainability champion. And what we were going into was because you're thinking of your market share as defined by replacing a more bad alternative, does that just make the business case easier? Because internally, when you're saying, hey, we need to go deeper into the data, we need to resource up effectively, we need to really understand every product's footprint. If the challenge, let's say, from the finance team or another team comes, why are we going so far into this? You're able to say, well, actually, look, this is a really core part of how we're planning to grab market share. Is this communication strategy, this brand strategy, is that true? Is it easier, do you think, to make the case internally for sustainability because it's so woven into the brand? Does that make a difference in how you make business cases?
Jessica Sansom [00:06:40]:
It does. It doesn't mean we can be lazy, though. We definitely have to make the business case Hume started. I mean, and this is not what anybody who's interested in food wants to hear. Right, but Hume started as a spreadsheet. It was designed to sort of say, if you were going to have your perfect meal from a nutritional perspective, what does that look like? You know, what is the right balance of fats to proteins, to carbohydrates. You know, what are all those micronutrients that you need that so many of us these days don't have? How much fiber do you need to? And literally, it was a formula on a spreadsheet where they said, okay, this is what it could be. And then these are the different ingredients that would go into delivering that split of macros and micros and so on.
Jessica Sansom [00:07:27]:
And then at that point, it was, okay, well, how do we make this taste half decent? And I'm not sure when you first had Huel, but the very first iterations of huel did not taste half decent.
Saif Hameed [00:07:37]:
We've definitely confessed, Jess. I think I was early in that journey, which may have colored why I was referring to it as a potion.
Jessica Sansom [00:07:44]:
The potion? Yeah. Really bad, right? I mean, it was. It was barely something that you could swallow. And we have got a lot better that these days. You know, we've got loads of flavors. It all tastes much better. I need to make sure I sell my product here as well. But when you come from a product from that perspective, it's then much easier to say, okay, we've got that spreadsheet.
Jessica Sansom [00:08:09]:
What does that then look like from the sustainability perspective? So if we overlay that on top of any of, what does that mean? So then how much carbon am I allowed, and how much water usage am I allowed, how much land usage, etcetera. And you can look at the ingredients that you've got, and you can look at what their footprints are for each of those different indicators, and then you can start to work out, you know, does it work? Am I going to meet it that way? So I think we were already attuned to that kind of style of thinking and designing our products. So it wasn't a huge leap to put sustainability over the top in that regard. We had a huge advantage from the start, because we decided to be plant based from the very beginning and to only use those plant ingredients, which, of course, have a lower footprint just naturally. But then we sort of said, all right, but how can we start to really refine it? And we dug down into, what's the difference between brown rice flour versus a farmer bean flour and so on. And so now we're at that stage of the detail in trying to work out how can we keep lowering footprints down. So the business case is easier in that regard, because we're just used to doing it, but also because we have this obsession with trying to design the perfect meal and to trying to make sure that that's what we can deliver. And sustainability is a really big part of that.
Saif Hameed [00:09:33]:
Jess, one of the things that I often talk about on my soapbox is this idea that, like, corporate footprints and scope one, two, three is not really very useful. And actually, we've sort of inherited this as a way that national carbon budgets used to be made and then industry wide carbon budgets used to be made. But actually as a lever for business change, I find it, frankly, pretty useless. I know we need it for regulatory purposes and reporting and so on. But actually, I find product footprints are a more intuitive way to look at the actual impact that the business has. Because you sidestep a lot of double counting. It's much easier for everyone inside the business to understand because in the way that you're articulating, you can talk about, like, brown rice versus fava versus something else. You can actually put it into context.
Saif Hameed [00:10:22]:
You can have the same conversation with your suppliers as well, and it sort of makes sense, rather than talking about all these somewhat arcane inputs into a scope three calculation. Would you agree with that? Or would you actually say that you're finding that both, like, corporate footprints and product footprints just serve very different purposes and actually they shouldn't be conflated?
Jessica Sansom [00:10:41]:
So basically, you're asking me if you want me to join you on your soapbox.
Saif Hameed [00:10:45]:
That is exactly right.
Jessica Sansom [00:10:47]:
That's where you're going. Okay. Well, the good news is I quite like your soapbox from where you're coming out. Yeah. I'm not a massive fan of the kind of corporate reporting. Scope one to three. It has its uses, of course, because sometimes you just need to be able to zoom out and look at things with the whole picture. And I guess also because ultimately, we're all kind of running a kind of checks and balances system within our organization.
Jessica Sansom [00:11:19]:
So we might want to use a bit more carbon over there and a bit less carbon over here. And that's easier to do when you're looking at it at the overall corporate level because you can see your space for maneuver. But when it comes to properly understanding where you're going to be able to make the difference and really sort of digging down into those hotspots and what might be driving them for that, I definitely find the product carbon footprinting to be a more useful tool because you can start to identify things which are happening along different value chains. Because, of course, you know, depends also on the size of the company, but different products. I mean, Huel is only a medium sized company, but different products that we produce already have quite different supply chains, so they might have a different version of manufacturing, you know, they might have more transport associated with one product than another. They've definitely got different ingredients. And if you can't see that, if you can't break that down, then it's very hard to know exactly how it is that you're going to proceed and how potentially could be small differences multiplied up are going to make really big differences overall. So, yeah, they both have a value.
Jessica Sansom [00:12:39]:
I guess I'm maybe 1ft on and 1ft off your soapbox in that regard. But I've definitely found the product level to be more informative for what I'm trying to achieve on a day to day basis. And if I go to the operations team and I want to talk to them about something, then for that purpose, definitely more useful.
Saif Hameed [00:12:56]:
Jess, I'd love to lean into that a little more in terms of the data gathering journey, because I think what you're describing, I can tell that you have just a lived experience that you're reflecting on in terms of setting up this program for success. Could you tell us a bit more about just how you set up to do product carbon footprinting at scale, whether it's like leaning into the data side, leaning into anything around the supply chain, and maybe, if you could, bonus points, if you could maybe give some indication to our listeners on how that was different for product carbon footprinting versus corporate footprinting.
Jessica Sansom [00:13:28]:
Yeah, I'm a bit old school of a veteran with this whole space. Now, my first product carbon footprint was with innocent drinks. When I worked there and we did 2007, it was with the Carbon trust. We were one of the first companies to do product carbon footprinting. So my first piece of advice would probably be to take a couple of paracetamol before we get started, because it can be really painful to get started on this process and the data gathering is just hedous. And that's why organizations such as yours are now existing, to help with that process and to try and automate it. So you've kind of got to start with whatever it is you've got. Right.
Jessica Sansom [00:14:09]:
I think that's one of the first things that we learn, both at innocent drinks and even now at Yule is all right, you know, what's a kind of rough guess of what I think the breakdown of my footprint is going to be? I mean, with any food product, for instance, it's going to be heavily based on the ingredients because so much of that carbon is used up in the agricultural stage. So that'd be my first kind of tip is just start where you think that the majority of emissions are going to lie. And we started using how good we're an ingredient database for carbon emissions from food. And that was fantastic because they had so many different ingredients in the database, we were able to really just start to understand on the ingredient level side of things what was going on. And to get that data is sort of close, you know, as accurate as we could get it in that regard. And that's when we sort of discovered Brownright versus father, you know, this example that's just going to keep coming back throughout this conversation. And then when it came to sort of starting to work further up the value chain, we thought, okay, we think that there are other hotspots in this space. Packaging, again, you know, not too painful because we're all used to packaging tax now.
Jessica Sansom [00:15:25]:
And a lot of that kind of packaging data, you know, we already have, it's already being submitted and, you know, often cases it's being done by a finance department and maybe it's the sustainability person. You're not even aware that that was happening. And so you need to sort of go and dig into and find these kind of things. And so packaging for us was another hotspot that we wanted to look at. And then freight, you know, obviously is a really big area as well. Again, you sort of think, oh, no, this is going to be a nightmare. But if you use any kind of third party logistics providers for that, they're recording all this information anyway. Of course, right? Because that's part of them looking at the efficiency of their operations.
Jessica Sansom [00:16:08]:
Regardless of carbon. They want to know how much fuel they're using. They know where all their trucks are going. So data isn't so much of an issue. I mean, when I did it back in 2007, trust me, it was really, really painful. But these days I'm finding that not just driven by carbon, but just driven by sort of the general availability of data. It's not as bad as we thought in trying to sort of pull those different pieces together. I think the most difficult one for us has been around manufacturing, because we use third parties for our manufacturing, and it's very difficult for them to be able to say, you know, down to the individual line, which is running fuel products.
Jessica Sansom [00:16:52]:
This is how much energy you use. But in that case, you sort of have to kind of apply an 80 20 rule, right? Because manufacturing on the whole for aqueducts is a really small part of the footprint. There's no heat involved. It's definitely small. So we sort of go oh, look, we could sweat the small stuff, but what's the point? Because it's going to be around 5% of the total footprint anyway. We'll take some assumptions in that space. So you really do have to kind of pick the battles that you want to fight and the ones which are going to be more meaningful to go after and relax a little bit on the other ones. And it's developing all the time in terms of how you can get that data and what gets moved around.
Jessica Sansom [00:17:35]:
So it is improving. But yes, pick your battle.
Saif Hameed [00:17:38]:
And Jess, if you think about, let's say, a few big insights or a few things that you do differently as a result of having dived into the weeds on product level footprints, the brown rice to fava is obviously one great example. Are there a few other learnings kind of coming out of that process that have changed what you do in terms.
Jessica Sansom [00:17:56]:
Of the differences that we've made to our products? Yeah, absolutely. We learn a lot around ingredients. One of my favorite things, I talk about this all the time because I was just so stunned, was to learn about some of the inefficiencies in food. So with some of our savory products, we use a tomato powder and I had no idea, but apparently it takes 1 fresh tomatoes to make 50 grams of tomato powder. And they just. You sort of sit there and go, that's ridiculous. Right? And maybe you use a teaspoon of that tomato powder in your product. I mean, just sort of sit there and think.
Jessica Sansom [00:18:38]:
At some point the food industry went a little bit crazy in order to be producing these kind of products.
Saif Hameed [00:18:43]:
And there's lots of those just to jump in. I did the same thing as an exercise for roses. So I used to have a rose farm, basically, in a rose essential oil extraction business. And I calculated it took about 80 roses to get 3 rose oil. Sorry, it wasn't even three minutes. It was like literally three drops, basically, of rose oil to go into a little perfume. And it's just insane when you start to think of what volumes you take to boil something down to a tiny component.
Jessica Sansom [00:19:11]:
Yeah. Just to get that really strong essence or flavour. And, I mean, I don't know, that's a whole other conversation, right? Is that the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do? But there's definitely some really crazy stuff out there with what goes on. So we had. We learned about the crazy stuff, which has been interesting, and it does force you to have that conversation, which is to say, how important is tomato powder in our products? You know, is that something that we should be using? Or is there something else that we can use in that space? So we've had lots of those kind of conversations. It's, you know, I mean, there's also been ones where we can sort of wag the tail of the dog. In that we discovered that the data that was available, secondary data for things like flavors, was really poor. And that, you know, by working with some of our suppliers and so on, we've been able to, you know, really more primary sources of data get much more accurate ideas.
Jessica Sansom [00:20:02]:
And, you know, we've seen our emissions factor for flavorings dropped from 57 kg/kg down to 3.5. And that was not because we've made changes to improve it. That was just because we got better data. So, you know, you need to be able to identify those as well. Because otherwise you could spend forever trying to reduce the flavorings in your product. But that's actually not the real footprint. So we've changed some ingredients, we've swapped some out for some other ones. We've decided whether or not to continue using some ingredients.
Jessica Sansom [00:20:33]:
Because of the crazy tomato powders and rose oils and so on. We've definitely dug into data a lot more and we've been using it to pull it into our financial decision making as well, around whether or not to proceed with some projects. So, for example, we were looking at moving a logistics center from one side of the United States to the other side of the United States. And there were obviously going to be efficiencies and cost reductions and so on associated with doing this from just general running cost perspectives. But there was quite a lot of resource time required to do this. And there would be some upfront costs and so on. We decided to then factor in, okay, well, what's the carbon gain that we're going to get from doing this? And how can we factor that into that business case about how we do things? And when we did it, pushed it over the edge, it got it through because it was going to save, reduce our emissions by so much that it then meant that the business said, yes, let's go ahead and put the resource and the time behind it to do it.
Saif Hameed [00:21:41]:
Jess, can I jump in? Because I think that's a fantastic example. And so if I just restate it for our listeners. When you actually look at the business case for moving the logistics facility from one location to another, there's a cost profile of doing that and maybe a revenue profile. And then when you add in the carbon savings that tilts it over the edge. Were those savings quantitative in that you worked out some form of carbon price logic to equate it to cash? Or was it qualitative in that you said there's this additional saving and it's a conceptual saving, but it's not necessarily blended into the cash numbers, if you follow my logic.
Jessica Sansom [00:22:19]:
Yeah, no, I follow you. No, we did it quantitatively. We turned it into a carbon price and then we put it into the business and we. I mean, it just made. It was a no brainer once it got to that perspective. I mean, and that's the beauty of this kind of thing. You see, once you can attach that financial value to it, you can really work out whether or not things make sense. And I've got another example.
Jessica Sansom [00:22:39]:
I think you might like this one. So a lot of our products come in a multi serve pouch. And, you know, one of the things that we really value, and our customers really value about our products is that they have a long shelf life, so you don't have to use them up within a week and then waste a lot, you know, like you bagged lettuce kind of thing. So our products typically have a twelve month shelf life, which means that from what we understand, the food waste on our products is really, really low, which is great, because it's ridiculous to throw out food. And part of the way that we achieve this is by using a pouch that has a mix of plastic and metal in its construction. But that means that the pouch is not recyclable because it's too difficult to separate out the materials. So we've talked for a long time about, you know, should we have a recyclable pouch? And obviously, people like to be able to recycle. That's something that makes them feel positive about what they're doing from an environmental perspective and so on.
Jessica Sansom [00:23:37]:
It was a bit of a negative brand thing for us not to be recyclable, but having undertaken the exercise to know what the product carbon footprint was, we realized that the pouch was 0.03% of the total product footprint, for a start. And if we made it recyclable, it was going to reduce it by some ridiculously small amount. So in terms of total carbon footprint, it was going to make zero difference. And then we turned, okay, so what's the carbon cost of decarbonization in there? And it was something along the lines of $400 per tonne that it was going to cost the business to do that. Whereas if we went down the logistics route and we looked at, you know, changing the freight arrangements, there was no carbon decarbonization, because it was actually a negative cost. It was going to be a saving to the pistons. So that kind of thing, I think, is really useful because it can be really hard to fight against things like those consumer pressures and pushes. Oh, you have to be recyclable.
Jessica Sansom [00:24:36]:
That's what's most important. Well, not really.
Saif Hameed [00:24:40]:
Yeah, Jess, I think we actually come across lots. You were right, by the way. I do love that example. And we've come across a few interesting nuggets like that. I mean, two others that I've come across. One is reusable cups and reusable stuff at restaurants where actually, if you look at that versus the actual food that the restaurant or food service is selling and making reductions there, it's a massive difference where the. The weight is on the actual reductions in the food and the optimization in the supply chain. Another example we've looked at recently on this show is methane inhibitors for cows.
Saif Hameed [00:25:14]:
Very different part of the process, but there's a lot of talk around that, which is, can you feed the cow something that reduces the methane emissions from the cow? And I think the actual price I've gotten from the beef companies is this works out at about dollar 160 per ton. When we did the back of the math, we got to like five hundred dollars to one thousand dollars per ton versus, if you look at a lot of yield optimization things you could be doing, I reckon you're probably at a small fraction of that when you start actually picking apart where you can get real reductions in yield. So. Yeah, totally. By your logic, maybe if we actually start talking a little bit about how you have supply chain conversations, because I imagine that you very quickly get into the territory of having a conversation with your supplier using some of the data that you're getting from your business to drive that dialogue. The tomato powder example that you shared is a great one. I imagine there's a conversation with the supplier coming out of that. I've spoken, actually, with a pea protein supplier that I think is also in your value chain.
Saif Hameed [00:26:16]:
And one of the interesting nuggets that we get from them is that they find two types of brands as their customers. One is usually smaller, mission driven brands that really want to jump into the weeds on what the data looks like, and the other is a lot of larger players that actually just still focus on quality and price. Could you take us into the tent maybe a little on what kind of supplier conversations you're having using this sort of data as a basis?
Jessica Sansom [00:26:40]:
Yeah, I might disappoint you a little. We're having some supplier conversations. But of course, Huel is not the biggest of companies, so how much we can influence is somewhat limited, getting better depending on which products we're talking about. But we're definitely having some. And we, of course, again, they're going to focus on ingredients because that's the highest impact area for most of our products. We're starting to talk about different kinds of production methods with our suppliers. So a really interesting one is stevia, which we use as a sweetener. It's very popular because it's not artificial.
Jessica Sansom [00:27:19]:
You know, it's a natural sweetener without calories associated with sugar and so on. But it's not the most efficient ingredient. So we come back to the Tata powder example. So, stevia, to get the particular sweetness, we are looking for the sort of just stevia glucosides that you can have from it. Only 1% of a stevia leaf can be used to get that. And because the rest of the leaf is used in the process, you know, 99% of the leaf is essentially wasted. Now, I'm massively oversimplifying this, but that's basically what it is. So the emission factor of stevia is really, really high.
Jessica Sansom [00:28:06]:
I mean, depends, you know, can vary, but we're talking 500 to 700 carbon emissions associated with 1 this stevia product. And we took that to our stevia supplies and we said, first of all, can you please explain it to me? Preferably like I'm six years old, why this is, you know, I'm not a chemist, but talk me through the process so I can understand why it's so incredibly high. They didn't do that like I was a six year old, because I still can't explain it to you like I'm six. But we did get to the point that they understood our concerns in this space, and they started to talk to us about different kinds of alternatives that we could potentially use. And we're actually looking now at using a fermented stevia, which basically, you know, to cut a very long chemistry lesson short, gets you to the same product with a lot, lot less carbon in the process. And it's really exciting. Fermentation in food is really exciting for all sorts of different reasons. And so we were able to have that conversation because of what we've identified in the carbon figures.
Jessica Sansom [00:29:18]:
And now that's one example, which is changing that production process. We've got other examples where we're now running trials with farmers who grow oats in Canada and in the UK, and they've said to us, it's really hard to get to the point that we're carbon neutral on our farms. And a big part of the problem is around the use of nitrogen fertilizer. So what we're doing now is we're actually funding a small wire field trial with both sets of suppliers where they're now going to plant clover alongside the oat crop. And that's because clover takes nitrogen out of the air and puts it into the soil, and then the oats can take up that nitrogen and use it as part of their growing. And you use less fertilizer. So it's a great result for the farmers because they're going to have lower costs if they can reduce their nitrogen fertilizer. And it improves the carbon efficiency of the crop.
Jessica Sansom [00:30:18]:
And the more that we go out and talk to our farmers now about, we're really interested in what we can do, not just on carbon, but also on water usage and biodiversity and so on. The more of these great examples we're finding. I found one the other day. I loved it. It was that if you grow chickpeas and flats next to each other, and I might get this the wrong way around, one of them loves water. That's the flax, and the chickpeas really don't. So if you grow them together, if there is too much water in any particular season, then the flax seeds will draw it up, and then the chickpea harvest doesn't falter or it's not reduced or you don't have as much disease problems and so on. So they are like these perfect buddies for growing together in the field.
Jessica Sansom [00:31:04]:
So, yeah, we are talking the suppliers and we're finding out these kind of things. And I. We're being able to put a little bit of funding behind testing them out in the fields or, you know, we're changing our products. So, you know, the kind of insights that we're getting are fantastic in that regard.
Saif Hameed [00:31:22]:
Jess, I don't know why you said you thought you'd disappoint me. I love the stevia example. I love the clover example. These are fantastic. I heard a similar story around to your clover. One around rice and crayfish, where the crayfish feeds off the husks and therefore reduces the methane emissions. I think the supply chain is full of these. I want to dig a little deeper into the stevia example.
Saif Hameed [00:31:48]:
Just for instance, the conversation you had with your supplier there. Can you tell us a little bit about how you went about making contact on that? I imagine there's a procurement team on your side, and there's a commercial team on the supplier side. And the dialogue that you're describing is actually not those stakeholders necessarily. It's maybe more your team and the R and D team or your team and the sustainability team on the other side. Like, who are the stakeholders? How do you move from procurement meets commercial to where you're landing on actually reengineering the product?
Jessica Sansom [00:32:22]:
We definitely have to start with the procurement team for an introduction, and they will tend to sort of ask their account manager and the supplier to say, okay, well, this is our question. It really helps that we already are known for what we're trying to achieve from a sustainability perspective, because when you explain it that way, then they sort of go, oh, okay. Yes, well, we kind of know what it is that you're about. What I really tend to find is if you can go through that introductions process, if you can say, all right, we're really curious about why this is happening, and our procurement team will make the, you know, the initial question, and who can you put us in touch with? And then, yes, we tend to get put in touch with a technical person or an R and D person and so on. But suppliers like their products, so therefore they like talking about them and they quite like talking about themselves. I mean, they're natural sort of human stuff in this space. So when you don't sort of go in accusingly and say, oh, my goodness, this is terrible, you're the worst people in the world. But instead you just sort of say, look, I really kind of want to understand what's happening here because this is the data that we've got and there must be a reason and an explanation and potentially also for them, a chance to prove that data wrong because a lot of us are using secondary data so they can sort of say, oh, well, actually, our primary data is different in that regard.
Jessica Sansom [00:33:42]:
So on the whole, those conversations are not particularly difficult as long as you don't go in accusing. If you go in and you sort of say you're doing it wrong, that's not going to get anywhere. But if you just show an interest to say, please explain this to me, as I said, like I'm six, preferably, then we've had a really good response from them. They've always been apt for having this conversation. And the other thing is, these days everybody's got carbon targets. So they're interested to understand and go through this process. And a lot of the time they haven't seen that specific data because maybe they're looking at it from the scope one to three emissions. We come back to our original chat, and therefore you don't necessarily see it.
Jessica Sansom [00:34:25]:
Therefore, you might just say, oh, well, I'm looking at it from a processing energy point of view, but what I'm not actually looking at is at it from coming from the bottom up and understanding, is there a different way that I could extract these compounds that we're looking for from relief?
Saif Hameed [00:34:42]:
Yeah, I think it's difficult if you're having this conversation with the supplier and the supplier says, hey, I'm moving to renewable energy across all my facilities, what more do you want from me? And actually, you're talking at cross purposes here. Do you ever find that the almost the inverse of what you're describing happens, which is where a supplier, commercial, or R and D team comes to you and says, hey, we have this amazing innovation. We think this will lower the product carbon footprint of your product by x. And if you procure this with us and you kind of have a long term relationship with us to buy this, we'll develop this and we'll deliver this and we'll help you achieve that goal.
Jessica Sansom [00:35:20]:
Yes, that definitely does happen. Suppliers do come to us, and non suppliers come to us all the time with, oh, my goodness, you know, we've got the latest answer that we can provide to you. I have to say, on most of these kind of frames, I'm entirely cynical, because there is no silver bullet. Any, any solution that we're tending to find, you have to have understood it. And anything that is going to reduce your carbon footprint by 75% is. If it sounds too good to be true, my experience generally, you know, usually it is too good to be true. We've had people come to us and offer us sort of amazing packaging solutions. That's an area where we tend to get it a lot.
Jessica Sansom [00:36:02]:
This will be incredible for you, and it will deliver so much carbon reduction. But usually what that tends to mean is either that the shelf life is going to go down, we might be going from something that was recyclable to something that's not actually recyclable, or kind of is recyclable, but only with very specific waste management infrastructure, which is not widely available in the markets that we're selling and so on. So there's a lot of those, there's a lot of red herrings in there. And then occasionally someone will come to you with something genuine. So you really do need to know what it is that you're talking about and what kind of questions that you need to ask in order to sort of sort through that noise.
Saif Hameed [00:36:48]:
And, Jess, it sounds to me like what you're saying is that the pitch or what they're trying to achieve is the right thing, because you're also trying to actively do this with some of your suppliers. But the way in which they flesh that out and the way in which they think, from your perspective, tends to be incomplete. Where actually, if they're coming with a packaging innovation and they did the numbers and they find out actually which locations this is going to be recycled in or not, what the characteristics are of that waste system, if they rounded out the analysis, it would land better. Am I on the right track? Or actually, would you say there's a. Like, what is your advice, basically, to these suppliers to do what they're doing better in making this pitch to you?
Jessica Sansom [00:37:28]:
My advice would be that, yes, sometimes they need to have done the numbers a bit more in that particular regard, that I mean, that they would need to have properly, actually investigated who we were before trying to do a quick sales pitch. In that regard, that would help, but in some cases, it's simply that it wouldn't matter how much of that they had done. It just isn't yet at a solution level. And it's tricky, right, because sometimes you've got this sort of whole chicken and eggs. Well, lots of times you've got this whole chicken and egg situation going on, which is perhaps what they've got is actually a really great solution, and it does offer all those benefits that they're talking about. But without, you know, coming back to the packaging example, without a waste management infrastructure that can handle the solution that they're offering to, it's not viable. It's not something that we can progress with. And that's really hard.
Jessica Sansom [00:38:32]:
I mean, we've looked at this incredible plastic sort of film that was dissolvable. I mean, I know there's lots of those, and it was made out of plant based plastic, so there was no petrochemical content at all in there. But it got really brittle quite quickly. And so, you know, in that case, what they should have understood was huel is a long shelf life product. We can't have a product that's going, you know, a packaging that's going to break down within three months. So that sort of plays to your first sort of suggestion, which is that they needed to have understood us in a lot better. But then you've got people who would come to us and say, what you really need is this special QR code on your packaging that will tell everybody how it can be recycled. You know, this is the answer.
Jessica Sansom [00:39:19]:
When it goes through material recycling facilities and so on, it will make sure that it's perfectly sorted and we have a lot less contamination. But then you've got a situation where only. I mean, and I don't think this was quite right, but only three out of goodness knows how many material recycling facilities in the UK are currently using their solution. So that's a real chicken and egg one, because, of course, the more of us that bought into doing that and used it on our products and so on, perhaps that would encourage to the waste management industry to use these scanners more and so on, and that would be a good result. But we're sort of stuck in this limbo period in the meantime. And in that case, it's not really fuel that they need to be coming to. They need to be going to really large movers of plastic packaging out there in the market.
Saif Hameed [00:40:03]:
Yeah, I think there's a lot of room, Jess, for these sort of network solutions on the assumption that they have some scale to sort of tap in and get volume. The one I'm thinking about is Tony's open chain, and I'd love to get your thoughts on that a bit as well. Tony's chuckle only is another customer of ours. We're super excited by a lot of the stuff that they're doing in the value chain, and it looks to me like they're managing to now get traction also behind the open chain solution as a framework for approaching coco sourcing. And I think one of the reasons that has worked well for them is that they had themselves as an anchor customer and then they kind of piece in other players and are now gathering volume. Could you tell us a little bit more about, like, how you see that initiative and whether you think there's room for a lot more of those, maybe in different parts of the supply chain?
Jessica Sansom [00:40:49]:
I love Tony's open chain. I think it's such a great initiative because in the beginning, obviously, it was really important for them as a brand to create a supply chain where their standards were so much higher than what was happening in the rest of the industry and to differentiate in that particular regard. And they did that and they were able to make great claims in that regard about what it was that they were doing and much more importantly, actually make that difference on the ground in West Africa. And then they said, okay, well, if we want to be true to our mission, then we'll open this up and we'll let other people use our supply chain and then we'll actually be delivering more benefit on the ground in terms of what's going on. So for us to look at our cocoa sourcing at Hill and to say we want to make sure that we're doing this as responsibly as possible, it was a no brainer to go to Tony's open chain and say, we would like to be part of your system. We'd like to buy from the cooperatives that you're working with on the ground there, and to join and to be part of that. And obviously, then we need to get more volume into that value chain now. And that's the challenge.
Jessica Sansom [00:41:58]:
I think the only difficulty that you've got there is because it was started by a brand, even though they've taken off Tony's from. When you talk about open chain, they just talk about open chain. Everyone still calls it, as you have just done, Tony's open chain, and comes back to, if you want to drive real change, you've got to put that volume demand behind it. So we need other really big chocolate companies to come and to buy into that particular standard and to make sure that that is the way that they do things. And of course, if they're a competitor to Tonys, they're not going to adopt something which is called Tony's open chain. That's not in their interests. I mean, can you imagine them happening department conversation in that regard? So I think those kind of initiatives are really good, really valuable. We need to have them.
Jessica Sansom [00:42:51]:
But I think at some point, we also need to know when to let them go as a brand and let them live on their own, as their own entity going forward, and to sort of let it become common ownership. I guess, in that regard, we had a project that we did a long time ago with innocent around strawberry growing in Spain. Because the strawberry growing region in Spain is one of the. It's the biggest growing region in the whole of Europe. It provides a huge amount of Europe, strawberries, right? And it uses masses and masses of water. And it all gets taken from an aquifer, which sits underneath the wetlands, which is UNESCO listed 6 million migratory birds every year and so on. And it had dropped to 50% of its levels. And we sort of said, okay, what is it that we can do? We were tiny.
Jessica Sansom [00:43:40]:
We were buying less than 1% of all the strawberries from the region. But we ran a project with the farmers out there that would work with us. Long story short, we identified that with using a predictive app and some different species, they could reduce their water usage by 40% across the board, which was a fantastic result. But what we had to do is we had to let that go from being an innocent project. So we invited in lots of other players, we invited in Tesco, we invited in Marks and Spencers, we invited Danone to all come and own that project. Thankfully, they did. You know, they saw that it was a great thing to do and now it's actually a project that's owned and funded by the EU. So even though it was innocence project, we had to let it go and be part of the greater group.
Jessica Sansom [00:44:30]:
So I think there are challenger brands out there like tonys that are doing a fantastic thing, and then at some point we need to let that become public property.
Saif Hameed [00:44:40]:
Yeah, I think that may. Especially if you're getting into the space of defining standards, it's very hard for you to have your brand on the standards and expect other brands to also subscribe. Speaking of brands, and we've started just. We kind of started with product carbon footprints. We talked a bit about operational level decisions. I love the logistics switch example. We've talked a lot about the supply chain, which I think is fantastic. I want to maybe reflect a little on the consumer communication and narrative side of product carbon footprints and just how you're using this to engage consumers.
Saif Hameed [00:45:14]:
One of the examples I think you reflected on is just recycling is not just about emissions reduction. Recycling is about consumer engagement and something that makes the consumer feel better about themselves. I think the QR code and how you can actually treat the packaging is another way that brands are actually getting consumers into the tent with them. How do you think about product carbon footprints underpinning some form of consumer engagement or awareness?
Jessica Sansom [00:45:39]:
Consumer engagement in the space of food is obviously hugely important. If we've got food being responsible for so much of our global greenhouse gas emissions, then there needs to be changes made. And whilst we can do a certain amount in agriculture and we can do a certain amount with food waste, getting people to undertake some level of dietary shift is going to be incredibly important if we want to meet global targets and try and keep climate change under control. So we do need to communicate with consumers on this. I have quite strong opinions in this space, in that I think that carbon ladling on products on the whole, is a fairly useless exercise. See, I kept my strong opinions down a little bit.
Saif Hameed [00:46:24]:
You're back on my soapbox, Jess. I'm warning you, I'm back on your soapbox.
Jessica Sansom [00:46:28]:
I am not a fan of carbon legally on products. I don't think that it is anywhere near enough to shift the dial the way that we need it to do. It's completely lacking in any kind of context. Most of the time, it's very, very poorly understood. You know, and one of the things that I always say when I'm on my soapbox about this stuff is I point to nutrition labeling. We've had mandatory nutrition labeling for 30 years, and yet if you look at our health statistics when related to diet and, you know, overweight and obesity and so on, they're all going the wrong way. So 30 years of nutrition labeling has made no difference whatsoever when it comes to people's health. And it's worse now than it has been, than it was 30 years ago when it was introduced.
Jessica Sansom [00:47:17]:
So let's not kid ourselves that by putting a carbon label on a product, we are going to magically deliver our carbon reduction goals when it comes to the food industry. Having said that, I think that it is important. Obviously, it's hugely important from internal business decision making to know where your carbon lies in your business and product. Carbon footprints are a really great way to do that. And we haven't got this master yet either at Huel. You need to find a way to then engage with your consumers about the carbon footprint of food and what it is that hopefully you can offer in this particular space. So our commitment on a product level is that every meal should fit within a carbon footprint aligned with one and a half degrees, or limiting global warming to one and a half degrees. So we know how we measure up.
Jessica Sansom [00:48:10]:
And last year, 85% of all the fuel products sold fit within that one and a half degree footprint limit. So how do we then go and talk to consumers about that? How do we then go and start to say, did you know that if you have a hill meal, that that's probably around 77% less carbon than a conventional lunche? You know, but more to the point, because even then, that's still being a bit negative, you know, it's 77% less. And let's make you feel bad about what it is that you normally eat. So what about if we continue to turn that around and say, if you have a fuel meal for lunch, then we can promise you that you're going to get all of this great nutritional benefit. So let's sort of appeal to you first on your selfish interests or your personal interests in that particular regard, and you're going to be doing a really great thing in terms of trying to limit climate change. So, you know, trying to talk to people in that sort of what's in it for them? What's in it for the greater good of the world way, I think, is so much more powerful than trying to sort of say, here's a carbon footprint on a product. Because when people choose food, they're going to choose it on taste and they're going to choose it on price, and they're going to choose it on traditions and culture and what they're comfortable with and so on. And those things are all going to be so much more important than what the carbon footprint of the product is.
Jessica Sansom [00:49:37]:
But if, you know, if you can use your product carbon footprint internally to make sure that you're doing everything that you can as a company and offer out that meal, and then make them feel really warm and fuzzy about what it is that they're purchasing, then you get brand loyalty, you get customers repeating their purchase and so on, and you get it more into their I day to day routine because they understand all of those benefits that come with it.
Saif Hameed [00:50:05]:
Just, I'm having two takeaways from this, or I have two takeaways from this. One is that the communication and how you use this data to build a narrative with your consumers should be really based around how you're already building your brand narrative with consumers. It's not slap a number onto the product and hope that it does the work for you is actually work this into the existing way in which you're building brand. The second takeaway is that I am seeing this challenger playbook emerging, which I see Oatly and Gusteau, and also actually Huel using, which is given that the base product is defined by, almost by virtue of the alternative, where you say, look, actually, you could be eating a regular meal, but this is better. It's cheaper, it's more efficient, it's better performance, and it's lower carbon footprint. The only narrative is, hey, you could be drinking dairy, but actually this is better. It's more humane, it's more ethical, it's also lower carbon footprint. And with gusto, it's the same thing versus supermarkets.
Saif Hameed [00:51:02]:
And actually kind of seeing how the carbon footprint reinforces that narrative, again, just builds on what your business is already developing for itself, which I think is a more sophisticated way to approach the problem. I'm conscious we're approaching time, and so I wanted to sort of wrap up just and try and attempt a summary of all the fantastic insights you've shared with us. So I'm going to try and then tell me if you think I've missed something and we should go back and recap. But I think where we started was saying, look, if you're going to be using product carbon footprints as a tool for driving change. Let's start with common sense. Let's start with what we already know about the business. Let's start with the data that we already have. Let's be 80 20.
Saif Hameed [00:51:45]:
Let's put that together and start to identify the hotspots, maybe at an ingredient or an activity level that we want to lean in on. Within each of those, you might identify then a few things that we really want to lean on as levers for change. I love the stevia example, for instance, where those are going into supply chain interventions. We're going to find ourselves very quickly in an R and D level conversation. But it might start with the existing commercial procurement relationship and then move into R and D. It's helpful if you start to think about carbon in terms of dollars. And I noticed that in multiple references you sort of imply this very robust thinking around just how you start to set a carbon price within the business. I love the logistics example that you talked about and how actually it's the carbon cost of option a versus option b that I eventually tilted the business case.
Saif Hameed [00:52:38]:
As we're talking about supply chain interventions, there will be some things that go beyond the ability of an individual brand to really drive change. I mean, at innocent with the strawberries example, you are really small part of the purchasing in oats, you are really small part of the purchasing in Coco, you're a really small part of the purchasing. It is helpful to have some network effect in play there that other brands can sign on to. For that to work, you also need an individual brand to remove itself from the branding of the intervention. As we're seeing with Tony's open chain. And then we sort of round it out with thinking about how do you actually package all of this great stuff in a narrative that makes sense for consumers and therefore make sense for the business economically? And I think where we said is actually the more that you build that on top of the foundation stones of your brand and work that into the existing brand narrative, the better. Do you think? Jess, I've summarized the meat of our discussion. Is there anything else you'd add onto that?
Jessica Sansom [00:53:34]:
I think it's an excellent summary. Well done, I guess. I think there's probably two things that I would want to add on to that. One would be to say the beauty of all of this knowledge is that you stop being consumer led. You're science led in this process, and then you're going to make much better decisions as opposed to sort of responding and reacting to what the latest trends are in the consumer world, in this space. And I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to consumers, but you need to explain to them about what your approach is and why it is that you're doing the different things that you're doing. And if you can explain that based on a really good understanding of your business and a really good understanding of your carbon footprint and so on, that is so much more powerful. So don't be consumer led is absolutely of utmost important in the space.
Jessica Sansom [00:54:27]:
Know what it is that's going on. And I think the other one is that it doesn't really matter. You know, we've talked about how you're having these discussions internally and how we can use the data internally to influence decisions. We've talked about how you can use it externally, internally to talk with your suppliers and all the rest. And I've, for a very long time, I sort of thought, you know, what is it that you do, what's your job? And you've sort of struggled with. Am I a sustainability manager or strategist? And really, you know, what I describe myself as is. Well, there's two versions. One is clean, which is to say that I'm a sustainability agitator.
Jessica Sansom [00:55:04]:
I want to just be there and consistently and, you know, constantly agitate for change in this space. And with knowledge behind me, I can do a much better job in terms of what goes on. Because it's amazing what you can achieve by just, you know, being that annoying little finger that's poking inside of everybody internally and externally. The not so clean version of that that I use is that unprofessional pain in the ass. But ultimately, that is what it is that we need to do. And once we've got the information to be able to do that, we can do it so much more effectively and to, yes, be an agitator, but not in a negative way, but in a kind of, how can we all get out there and make this better? And when you've got that enthusiasm and energy, it's so much more powerful.
Saif Hameed [00:55:51]:
I love that, Jess. And that's a fantastic note for us to bring this to an end on. Thank you so much for joining us, really. It's been a blast having you. I don't know where we ended up on the soapbox. I feel like you had 1ft on, 1ft off, and then you put the other foot back on as well. So I think we're ending on the same soapbox, Jess.
Jessica Sansom [00:56:08]:
It's very comfortable. I like this soapbox. I'll stay.
Saif Hameed [00:56:13]:
Thanks. Thanks a lot, Jess. Well, fantastic. That's a wrap. Thank you so much to our listeners for tuning in as well. We're going to be running a special on protocarbon footprinting as a webinar also. So if you enjoyed any of the insights you're hearing here, please feel free to tune into that. And we'll go for a deeper dive as well.
Saif Hameed [00:56:30]:
And, yeah, tune in next time. Thanks so much.