🌱5 partners to help you measure your biodiversity impact, on World Biodiversity Day
Featuring NatureMetrics, BeeOdiversity, Abel & Cole, Ivy Farm and more...
Happy Monday!
Are you part way through No Mow May and feeling like Mother Nature herself? We think there is more to be done! To celebrate International Day for Biological Diversity on the 22nd May, we are taking a look at some of the frameworks, partners and resources you can lean on to reduce your brand’s negative impacts on nature.
Read on to catch up on the latest and greatest news from consumer goods x sustainability! Like happy squirrels we have gathered you a huge pile of nuts news to keep you feeling positive all week.
Let’s dive in…
> In Focus
Measuring and Managing Your Biodiversity Impact
by Indira Ardiyatna
Defined as the variety of plant and animal life in the world or in a particular habitat, biodiversity remains as a primary indicator of our planet’s and humanity’s health and underpins every aspect of our society. The preservation of biodiversity has emerged as a critical concern: researchers finding that biodiversity loss is the biggest driver of infectious disease outbreak, with new infectious diseases originating in wildlife.
With various tools and services rapidly developing in recent years to help measure carbon emissions (psst, see full list on our MEASURE database) and companies offering insurance to protect your carbon credits, there has been a growing interest to also map and measure the risks and impact of business impact on biodiversity. It is still a work in progress as there isn’t yet a solid consensus on biodiversity measurement, unlike the voluntary carbon market that has 1 tonne of CO2e as a unit. This hasn’t stopped brands like L’Occitane and Alpro from taking a proactive approach and setting nature targets. I’m sure this leads you to wonder, how can your brand take action?
‘Be Part of the Plan’
The theme of this year’s international day of biodiversity is ‘Be Part of the Plan’ - encouraging all stakeholders to prioritise actions to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework. One of the key targets in the plan is Target 15, which encourages businesses to assess, disclose and reduce biodiversity-related impacts. To help with this, a working group of financial and climate members was established, called the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). They share recommendations and guidance to help businesses and finance to integrate nature in the decision making. Many companies are following the guidelines to ensure they can move away from nature-negative outcomes that are aligned with the Global Biodiversity Framework.
If you are looking for a consistent approach to measure your biodiversity impact and identify risks and opportunities, check out TNFD’s LEAP. LEAP stands for Locate, Evaluate, Assess and Prepare.
How can YOUR brand be part of the plan?
‘Be part of the Plan’ is a call to action. As brands that rely heavily on natural resources for their products, understanding and measuring your biodiversity impact is not just an ethical responsibility but also a business imperative.
As already mentioned, the methods to monitor and measure biodiversity might not yet be as streamlined as we’d like, but complex problems sometimes require creative thinkers…and we’ve scoured the net to find 5 clever companies your brand can work with to measure your biodiversity impact to get you started…
NatureMetrics - Their mission is to make biodiversity measurable at scale. Using eDNA, they can identify individual species from small samples of soil, sediment, water and air. Their Nature Monitoring Platform helps them gain data and insights that helps companies strengthen their nature impact reporting.
BeeOdiversity - Using bees for their main solution, BeeOmonitoring is a tool for measuring biodiversity and pollution through the analysis of pollen collected by bees. This data can then help inform partners to identify and understand their impact on nature, e.g. number and level of pollutants or quality and diversity of plant species, and also give nature-based solutions. BeeOdiversity has worked with water company evian since 2021 on their Association for the Protection of the evian Mineral Water Impluvium to assess the environment and propose targeted interventions.
NatCap - A nature intelligence company spun out of Oxford University that specialises in helping organisations measure and manage their environmental impact. Their main solution is offering biodiversity impact assessments to help companies evaluate the effects of business activities on biodiversity and develop strategies by using tailored analytical tools to help businesses manage the impacts.
The Biodiversity Consultancy - Specialising in providing biodiversity expertise to various stakeholders, they offer biodiversity strategy development, impact assessments and capacity building to help companies manage their biodiversity footprint. The Biodiversity Consultancy has worked with Nutella producers, Ferrero Group.
Nala Earth - Nala’s nature and biodiversity management platform has modules to help companies provide clarity and actionability, such as state of nature by mapping global operations and impact dependencies to show how companies’ activities and commodities impact the environment. Nala Earth have worked with CPG brand HiPP, a German baby food manufacturer, to identify production sites exposed to elevated levels of water risk and sites that experienced land degradation
Although we see companies slowly beginning to talk about nature and biodiversity, we are detecting signals that biodiversity impact will be on the agenda more and more - venture capital funding in ‘nature tech’ companies ‘increased by 18%, from $1.56bn in 2022 to $1.85bn’ in 2023, amidst a fairly stagnant year for other areas of investment. Global demand for biodiversity credits could reach $2 billion in 2030 and $69 billion in 2050. Why? To meet expected demand — new regulations are emerging that will bring biodiversity onto the agenda more and more. EU Deforestation Regulation, introduced in 2023, will become mandatory by the end of 2024 (for companies trading certain products in the EU and those who export the same products from the EU) and is designed to limit the EU’s impact on deforestation and biodiversity loss around the world. CSRD also includes a section on biodiversity which thousands of companies will need to report on.
Looking for more inspiration? We’ve got you covered! Dive into our archive and read up on 11 brands putting biodiversity at the heart of their products, via their ingredients, and how Faith in Nature gave nature a voice on their Board.
> Follow up with…
Webinar: TNFD 101: Introduction to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures
Interactive website: Domino Effect - Biodiversity Loss, Why it Matters, UNEP
Newsletter: Superorgansim on Substack
> Last week in consumer goods x climate…
The Good(s) News
Up and coming brands…
🎯 Volta Greentech have secured SEK 32m (~£2.95m) to develop their Lome cattle feed additive product. The feed additive reduces the enteric emissions from cattle while also having a lower cost than their previous algae-based product.
🎯 ETHOSA, the vegan waterless personal care company, has successfully raised over £230k through a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs, surpassing its £150k goal. The funds will be used to enhance brand growth, focusing on strategic marketing. Ethosa, known for its eco-friendly powder-form products, aims to expand its offerings, including a new powder-form shampoo.
🎯 Ivy Farm and Synbio Powerlabs have partnered to scale up the manufacturing of mammalian cells in food-grade fermentation reactors at Synbio’s new hub. This partnership serves as a pilot to test the large scale manufacturing of cultivated meat at Synbio’s Labs, reducing the capital and entry costs of smaller businesses.
Bigger organisations…
⭐️Poundland & Dealz announced their goal of reducing their operational carbon footprint by 50% by the end of 2024. Part of this goal includes initiatives such as making their shopping bags 100% recyclable. To date they’ve already purchased 100% renewable energy for their operations and is the first UK retailer to have doors on 100% of their fridges.
⭐️ALPLA Group have developed a recyclable wine bottle made from PET. The new 750ml bottle, weighing only 50g, is significantly lighter, boosts a 38% lower carbon footprint and is up to 30% cheaper than a glass bottle.
⭐️ Abel & Cole has extended its Club Zero refillable range, previously online-only, into physical stores. Partnering with Dizzie, they have introduced the products to over 150 independent retailers, including Refill Therapy stores in London. Customers pay for the product and a deposit on reusable containers, which are returned, cleaned, and reused. The initiative aims to overcome challenges of in-store refilling, with plans for further expansion and increased use of reusable packaging.
⭐️Marks and Spencer have partnered with Polytag to quantify how much single-use plastic enters the recycling stream. Polytag’s invisible UV tags will be used to track packaging for them to understand how much of their single-use plastic is collected and sorted at recycling centres.
Industry wins…
⚡️The UK government has introduced a robust support package for farmers, featuring an £80 million annual fund for horticulture and a £10 million investment to enhance apple production. The new UK Food Security Index will help track and improve food security, and new initiatives will reduce bureaucratic hurdles and promote innovative farming methods, ensuring a stable and resilient food supply.
⚡️UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hosted a summit with food system representatives to enhance the UK's food security. A "resilience group" led by Nigel Murray, managing director of Booths, was formed to coordinate government and industry actions on climate change, water shortages, and biodiversity loss. This group aims to address the crisis by focusing on these critical issues. The group will focus on improving cooperation across the supply chain and addressing challenges like climate change, water shortages, and biodiversity loss. Recruitment for senior executives from various sectors is underway to support these initiatives.
Want good news sooner? We post our top 5 stories every Friday on LinkedIn! If your CPG brand has good news to share, let us know.👇
> In case you missed it
Want more? Here’s what’s happening across FTF at the moment…
Making moves - our very own Ellie James has started her new role as Marketing Exec. at Wildfarmed!
MEASURE updates - we’ve added 5 new partners to our database.
Meet the Brands - Every now and then we get the chance to do a really detailed interview with a brand. Last week we published our latest Meet the Brands interview with Ooni.
That’s it for today!
Want more? Check out ‘The Check-Out’ this Thursday for the latest brands in our basket. In the meantime, if you have a biodiversity partner or solution you would like to recommend, reply to this email or reach out at info@followingthefootprints.com.
Much love,
Team FTF