Eco Food Choice translates complex environmental impacts into clear, comparable information—making sustainability visible and actionable for both consumers and producers.

LIFE Eco Food Choice project is funded by Europe’s DG Env, and runs from 2024 to 2028. It is a cooperation between 9 expert partners from four countries: France, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. The main aim of the project is to develop and harmonize environmental labeling methodologies at the European scale.

The project is centered around three work packages:

1. Development of harmonized LCA methodology

The LCA methodology facilitates cross-food category comparisons, meaning that, for instance, an apple can be compared to a chocolate bar. The methodology builds on the European Commission’s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method and the PEF Category Rules (PEFCRs).

It addresses the limitation that PEFCRs do not exist for all product categories, and improves consistency between them, as current PEFCRs are not fully harmonized and do not enable comparisons across food categories. In addition, the Eco Food Choice methodology introduces further improvements to PEF, for example in the areas of biodiversity and ecotoxicity.

2. Development of grading methodology

An environmental label should be easy for consumers to understand and use, while also providing an incentive for producers to reduce their environmental impact. To achieve this, LCA outcomes need to be translated into a format that is accessible to non-experts.

Within Eco Food Choice, a grading methodology is being developed, resulting in a traffic light–type label combined with a numeric score. The research explores different design choices, such as the number of grades (e.g. five, like Nutri-Score, or eight), the distribution between grades, the effort required for producers to improve their score, and the inclusion of uncertainty based on data quality indicators.

3. Testing and design of environmental label

The effectiveness of an environmental label ultimately depends on whether it influences consumer behaviour and leads to more sustainable purchasing decisions. This work package focuses on both the design of the label and consumer research, including online and in-store testing.

For more information and deliverables, visit the project’s page here.

My role: My involvement in the project spans all work packages. I am the work package leader for the development of the grading methodology, lead several sub-tasks within the LCA methodology development, contribute to others, and act as an advisor in the consumer testing, particularly from the perspective of environmental scoring.