GreenGrocer

GreenGrocer is a four-year Horizon Europe project that strengthens the evidence base for a sustainable food system. It improves the data and tools used to assess the environmental footprints of food, closes gaps on impacts such as deforestation, biodiversity loss and pollution, and helps decision makers put this evidence into practice.

SEI plays a central role through two centres, SEI York and SEI HQ, contributing across six work packages (WPs). SEI York, based at the University of York, leads WP2, “Exploiting the data: Regular and FAIR access to high-quality food-impact datasets”. We bring together data from established open platforms and models, align them with the EU Product Environmental Footprint approach and FAIR data principles, harmonise indicators and methods, prepare PEF-ready datasets, and translate complex results into clear findings for policy makers, regulators and businesses.

We also contribute to the project’s data foundations. This includes strengthening measures that link food products to deforestation and biodiversity pressures, improving trade-linked modelling so impacts can be traced across borders, and supporting indicators for water, nutrients and chemical pollution. The work builds on SEI tools and research such as Trase, the Global Environmental Impacts of Consumption (GEIC) indicator and the IOTA framework.

By the end of the project, GreenGrocer delivers interoperable datasets, practical guidance and worked examples that make footprint results easier to compare and apply across supply chains and markets. This provides better evidence for more consistent labelling, reporting and procurement, and supports a faster transition to sustainable food systems.