We have taken our sustainability journey up a notch, by making our entire range of products carbon neutral, taking the crown of the world’s first Carbon Neutral ready meal.

Carbon neutrality refers to achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions. This is done by balancing what carbon dioxide emissions are generated, in our case as a result of our business activities, with its removal, often by a process of carbon offsetting but also through total elimination or reduction.

‘I founded fiid on a mission to create a better business and while we’ve always prided ourselves with doing the right thing, we knew the time had come to kick things up a gear with sustainability. The business grew out of a personal frustration with the amount of food waste generated by traditional meals and while we’re extremely proud that since launch we’ve been a zero food waste business, we knew we needed to do more which is why we’ve chosen to neutralise the carbon footprint of every single meal that we produce. Impact is important to us and to our customers who have already helped us donate over 500,000 school meals to children in developing countries. By neutralising the carbon footprint of our meals, we’re helping them make another concrete contribution to fight global warming.’ Shane Ryan, Founder

The project was led by our Head of Culture and Capability, Annie Lee who was supported by Climate Partner, the climate consultancy.

‘The whole process was a real eye-opener and would have been so much more daunting were it not for the fact that we already work with a number of fantastic suppliers who have their own sustainability agendas. This made the process of data collection a lot less arduous. What we ended up with was a detailed report on our carbon emissions broken down into different focus areas so we can actively work on reducing carbon emissions rather than simply offsetting. This is the goal for us since offsetting projects ultimately don’t eliminate the emissions we are adding to the atmosphere. The most environmentally positive step we can make is to reduce and eliminate our carbon emissions in the first place.’ Annie Lee, Head of Culture and Capability

Working with the team at Climate Partner, we calculated the carbon emissions generated by our meals based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard (GHG Protocol). We measured our Italian Lentil and Sundried Tomato Ragu as the control, and used these findings to offset the entire range. For the calculation, the “cradle-to-customer plus waste” approach was used, calculating the life cycle of raw materials and packaging, relevant logistics, manufacturing, delivery to customers, and the disposal of our fiid and its packaging post-use.

One 400g fiid meal emits 0.5 kg CO2e, that’s the same as 8 servings of oats. See below for a breakdown of our product footprint and the impact on each area of the cycle.

Following on from our carbon neutral project, we're setting some ambitious targets as part of our sustainability journey, promising transparency and continuous improvement by:

• Tackling raw materials, sourcing ingredients closer to our manufacturer, lowering transport distances and overall emissions.
• Partnering with proactive logistics companies, who are carbon neutral or working towards a robust sustainability agenda.
• Completing a full Life Cycle Assessment to become a carbon neutral company. We took the first step looking at our products, now it’s time to look at all scopes within our business.
• Currently, all our meals are in a flexible packaging which results in a low footprint by reducing materials, energy use and logistics. Although these are great benefits for the environment, fiid is also looking at ways to fully recycle their packaging and offer 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging for all new product formats.

In total, we have offset 188t CO2e for 2020 which is equivalent to the electricity used by 34 homes for an entire year. With Climate Partner, we supported projects that align with our sustainability strategy and UN Sustainable Development Goals of Zero Hunger, Good Health and Well-Being and Responsible Consumption and Production. We split our offsets between two Gold Standard projects - Clean Cookstoves in Rwanda and Wind Energy in India. To see more details on our partnership with Climate Partner and our projects, check out our Climate Partner page.