The food industry is facing a significant challenge in its efforts to track and manage scope 3 emissions, which are the indirect emissions that arise from a company’s supply chain. Levent Ergin, the global chief ESG sustainability strategist at Informatica, highlights the complexities involved in this process. Many agrifood corporates find themselves overwhelmed, unsure of where to begin in fulfilling their climate commitments. Ergin emphasizes that the key to addressing these challenges lies in effective data management. “Our motivation really is to certainly help them with their data challenges, because ultimately, at the end of the day, the best way to mitigate greenwashing is to be able to evidence everything you’re doing with data,” he explains.
To facilitate this, Informatica recently announced a partnership with HowGood, a sustainability intelligence platform, during Climate Week NYC. This collaboration aims to integrate HowGood’s sustainability data into Informatica’s AI-powered Intelligent Data Management Cloud for ESG Sustainability. The goal is to provide agrifood companies with a comprehensive view of their supply chains, enabling better decision-making and more effective decarbonization efforts. Michael Streitberger, head of partnerships at HowGood, adds that “shared visibility and accessibility will enable more efficient decarbonization and improved sustainability across the industry.”
HowGood employs a robust analysis system to score food products based on various sustainability metrics, including greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, soil health, and blue water usage. Its Latis software tool aggregates information from over 600 data sources to provide insights on more than 33,000 ingredients. This data-driven approach allows food companies to evaluate the socio-environmental impact of their products. By partnering with Informatica, HowGood gains enhanced access to critical data, streamlining the process for clients who previously had to manually fill out extensive spreadsheets, which could lead to inaccuracies.
Ergin notes that this partnership will significantly expedite data collection and improve the quality of information available for sustainability assessments. “We can make trusted and mastered data available to HowGood, and [HowGood] can do the wonderful enrichment around [sustainability metrics],” he states. The integration also allows Informatica to store this data for future needs, such as analyzing supply chains for compliance with regulations like the EU’s Deforestation Regulation.
The challenge of scope 3 emissions remains a pressing issue for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. These emissions often account for a staggering 65% to 95% of a company’s total emissions, making them a focal point for climate action. A report from Ceres indicates that companies that include scope 3 emissions in their climate targets are more likely to achieve significant emissions reductions. Despite Informatica’s existing solutions, Ergin indicates that a more robust approach was necessary for agrifood corporations, given the complexity of tracking emissions across numerous raw materials and ingredients.
For instance, a global catering company may utilize a multitude of recipes, each containing various ingredients, complicating the task of mapping and quantifying emissions accurately. “It’s a very complex process to even map that out, and to house that information,” Ergin explains. The integration of HowGood’s data capabilities with Informatica’s systems is designed to simplify this process, enabling companies to link their emissions data with transactional data effectively.
As the food industry grapples with the pressing need for transparency and accountability regarding sustainability, this partnership represents a crucial step toward addressing the “garbage in, garbage out” problem that has long plagued data management in the sector. By providing agrifood companies with accurate and actionable data, Informatica and HowGood aim to empower these organizations to take meaningful strides in reducing their environmental impact and achieving their climate objectives.