WRAP has announced the launch of the Global Sustainable Transition Alliance (GSTA), a collaborative initiative aimed at creating more consistent, comparable data for measuring the environmental footprint of food and drink products.
According to the industry body, the programme, convened by WRAP and Wageningen University & Research, will address the time and effort spent by food and drink firms navigating the ‘complex and fragmented world’ of product footprinting and reporting, enabling them to focus more of their efforts on developing environmentally-friendly products.
The programme is intended to be internationally applicable and compatible with existing technologies in use across the industry.
‘Initially focusing on GHG emissions, [the] GSTA will align and conform with major frameworks such as the GHG Protocol, SBTi, PACT, ISO and PEF – adding a high level of specificity and detail, to enable genuinely comparable product footprints, regardless of who is calculating them,’ WRAP noted.
‘Shared foundation’
“It has been hugely exciting to partner with Wageningen University & Research to establish this alliance for the food and beverage sector,” commented Sofie Schop, executive director, EU and global partnerships director at WRAP.
“By joining GSTA and our leading founding members, your business will be part of the first global industry-wide alliance to develop a single global footprinting standard. We want this standard to benefit businesses of all sizes and capabilities, providing consistency and efficiency for the industry across the globe. Together, we want to create a shared foundation for comparable data to create faster, more informed decisions that drive measurable emissions reductions across the food and beverage industry.”
The Global Sustainable Transition Alliance has been developed alongside a wide array of organisations from across the food industry, as well as data and research bodies, including Ahold Delhaize, Schwarz Group, Mars, Mondra, Global Changer, HowGood, inoqo, the European Sustainable Food Coalition, the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT), REWE Group, Edeka Zentrale Stiftung & Co. KG, Foodsteps, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), among others. Read more here.
