The carbon footprint of a cheeseburger is a notoriously slippery number. It depends on the cow, the feed, the farm, the cheese, the bun, the transport, and the heat under the grill. For a food brand or a restaurant chain trying to report Scope 3 emissions, that complexity has long meant expensive, one-off consultancy work. My Emissions, a London-based startup, thinks the answer is software that can label the burger, the pizza slice, and the ready meal automatically.
Founded in 2020, the company has built a platform that uses life-cycle assessment (LCA) data, blended with a customer’s own supplier information, to spit out a carbon intensity score for any food product or dish. The output is a simple A-to-E traffic-light rating, designed to be slapped on a package or a menu. It is a bet on regulation, retailer pressure, and consumer curiosity all converging to make this kind of accounting not just nice-to-have, but mandatory.
A software wedge into food LCA
Traditional product-level carbon accounting is a bespoke, manual process. My Emissions aims to productize it. The platform provides default emissions values for thousands of ingredients, pulling from established LCA databases. When a customer,a food manufacturer or a restaurant group,connects their own supplier data, the model refines the calculation. The goal is a scalable, repeatable footprint for every SKU or menu item, updated as recipes or supply chains change [My Emissions, product page].
The wedge is affordability and speed. Where a full LCA consultancy project might cost tens of thousands and take months, My Emissions offers a subscription software model. The company says it helps users "measure, reduce, and communicate" their food carbon footprint, with outputs designed for both internal reduction strategies and consumer-facing carbon labels [Green Queen, Nov 2022].
Why the food sector is a ripe target
Food production accounts for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the vast majority of that footprint falling under Scope 3 for anyone selling the end product. For a large food company, thousands of these upstream emissions sources are a reporting nightmare. Several forces are now turning that pain into a potential market.
- Regulatory push. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is expanding the number of companies that must disclose environmental impacts, including Scope 3. The UK’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements are moving in a similar direction.
- Retailer demands. Major supermarkets and foodservice groups are setting their own net-zero targets, which inevitably push requirements down onto their suppliers.
- Consumer labels. A simple, visual carbon rating offers a marketing edge for brands wanting to appeal to climate-conscious shoppers.
My Emissions is positioning itself at the intersection of these trends, arguing that software is the only way to meet the coming demand for product-level footprints at scale [My Emissions - Food manufacturers & brands].
Traction and the team behind it
The company has raised a total of $2.33 million in seed funding, according to PitchBook data, with Salica leading a $1.3 million round in April 2024 [LinkedIn, April 2024][PitchBook, Unknown]. Its most visible partnership is as the "official carbon labelling partner" of Just Eat Takeaway.com, and it developed a solution for the 2024 UEFA Champions League Final [Crunchbase, Unknown][Forbes, Unknown].
The founding team is small. Matthew Isaacs, the CEO and spokesperson, started the project with co-founder Aaron during the COVID-19 lockdowns, initially by adding carbon labels to online recipes [Green Queen, Nov 2022]. Nathan Bottomley is also listed as a co-founder [Kafoodle, 2026]. The company describes itself as a "small team of LCA experts, data scientists and food sustainability specialists" [My Emissions - About].
| Founder | Role | Background Note |
|---|---|---|
| Matthew Isaacs | Co-Founder & CEO | Economics and consulting/tech background; main company spokesperson [LinkedIn, Unknown]. |
| Aaron (Aron) | Co-Founder | Motivated by making carbon information simple for everyday food decisions [Green Queen, Nov 2022]. |
| Nathan Bottomley | Co-Founder | Listed as co-founder in partnership announcement [Kafoodle, 2026]. |
The open questions
For all the tailwinds, the path is not without its bumps. The market for automated food carbon accounting is still nascent, and My Emissions is not the only player looking at it. The competitive landscape includes larger sustainability software platforms expanding into food, as well as consultancies building their own tools. The company’s public customer list beyond Just Eat is limited, which makes it harder to gauge the depth of its enterprise traction.
The other perennial challenge in carbon accounting is data quality. The platform’s accuracy hinges on the underlying LCA databases and the quality of supplier data uploaded by customers. For a small brand with opaque supply chains, the output will necessarily be an estimate. My Emissions’ bet is that a consistent, directionally correct estimate that enables year-on-year comparison and reduction planning is valuable enough, even before perfect data arrives.
The unit economics of a carbon label
Let’s run a simple, back-of-the-envelope check. Assume a mid-sized food manufacturer has 500 unique SKUs. A traditional consultancy might charge £5,000 per product for a full LCA, a one-time cost of £2.5 million. My Emissions’ SaaS pricing is not public, but even at a premium enterprise rate of £50,000 per year, the software would pay for itself in less than a month on a pure cost-replacement basis. The real value, of course, is in ongoing updates, recipe tweaks, and the ability to generate labels for new products in minutes, not months.
The company must now prove it can move beyond one-off projects and partnerships to become the embedded operating system for food carbon accounting. Its most important incumbent to beat isn’t another software startup; it’s the spreadsheet and the annual sustainability report, where product-level detail gets lost in corporate averages. If it can replace those, the label on the burger starts to look like a very smart business.
Sources
- [My Emissions, Unknown] Food carbon accounting that automates scope 3 | https://myemissions.co/
- [Green Queen, Nov 2022] The Startup Helping Food Businesses Calculate Emissions & Be More Transparent With Carbon Labelling | https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/the-startup-helping-food-businesses-calculate-emissions-be-more-transparent-with-carbon-labelling/
- [LinkedIn, April 2024] My Emissions secures £1.3 million Seed investment led by... | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/deallite_my-emissions-secures-13-million-seed-investment-activity-7188130423225413632-cspH
- [PitchBook, Unknown] My Emissions 2025 Company Profile: Valuation, Funding & Investors | https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/497224-36
- [Crunchbase, Unknown] My Emissions - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/my-emissions
- [Forbes, Unknown] My Emissions | https://www.forbes.com/profile/my-emissions/
- [Kafoodle, 2026] Partners with Kafoodle for integrated food carbon labelling | https://www.kafoodle.com/
- [My Emissions - About, Unknown] My Emissions - About | https://myemissions.co/about/
- [My Emissions - Food manufacturers & brands, Unknown] My Emissions - Food manufacturers & brands | https://myemissions.co/food-manufacturers-and-brands/