We believe empowering people with better information can be a catalyst for big changes.
When you see a carbon footprint number next to a food item in our app, that figure represents our best estimate of how much carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) was emitted to bring that product from its origins to your table.
In simple terms, it’s the climate cost of the product — expressed in grams of CO₂e. That’s the same unit scientists use to describe greenhouse gases from all sources, whether it’s a car journey, a flight, or the production of a single banana.
Most people have a pretty good idea of what the things they buy cost in terms on money, but there is much less common sense intuition on the carbon footprint of the things we buy. Another source of carbon footprint literacy are books like “How Bad Are Bananas”.
Why We Use “per 100 g”
When the exact weight of a food isn’t known, ambientChat.ai displays the carbon footprint per 100 grams of product. This makes it easy to compare different foods directly — a 100 g portion of cheese versus 100 g of rice, for example — without guessing the package size.
When we do know the weight, you’ll see the total footprint in actual grams. This gives you a clearer sense of your item’s full impact while keeping the comparisons consistent.
How the Estimate Is Calculated
The number you see isn’t just a guess. It’s an AI-generated estimate based on open, peer-reviewed environmental data — the same kind used in academic lifecycle assessments (LCAs). These studies measure emissions from the “cradle to the gate”: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, and transport up to the point of sale.
Our model draws from major scientific sources such as Poore & Nemecek (Science 2018) and public databases like EcoInvent and Open Food Facts. Using that knowledge, it estimates the typical CO₂e intensity (in grams per gram of food) and then adjusts for the product type.
Think of it as an informed estimate — much more sophisticated than an average, but not yet a custom calculation for every single item.
What the Numbers Mean in Everyday Terms
Numbers can feel abstract, so here’s some perspective:
- A banana: ~80 g CO₂e per 100 g — about the same as driving a small car half a kilometre.
- A portion of beef: ~2,500 g CO₂e per 100 g — roughly 30 times higher than most plant-based foods.
- A tomato: anywhere from 50 to 150 g CO₂e depending on how and where it’s grown.
That variability matters. Even the same food can have very different footprints depending on its journey and production methods. Our aim is to make those differences visible, not invisible.
Like any AI generated information, it can be wrong. We provide a confidence estimate from the AI system we use, but you should treat this data with the same balance of interest, inspiration, and skepticism of any numbers from an artificial intelligence.
How to Use ambientChat.ai to Explore Carbon Footprints
You can ask ambientChat.ai simple, natural questions — just as you’d ask a person. For example:
- “What’s the carbon footprint of this product?”
- “How much CO₂e is in this meal?”
- “Which item on this menu has the lowest footprint?”
- “What’s the footprint of the groceries in my basket?”
The app can also help you go beyond food:
- “What’s the carbon footprint of this T-shirt?”
- “How sustainable is this shampoo bottle?”
Why It’s Not a Full LCA (Yet)
A full Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) is the gold standard for measuring environmental impact. It tracks precise data for each product’s supply chain — the farms, the trucks, the factories, even the electricity mix used.
What you see in ambientChat.ai today is an estimated footprint, not an LCA. But it’s a start: a consistent, transparent presentation layer for data that can become increasingly accurate as better information becomes available.
Where This Is Headed
Our vision is that, one day soon, every food item will know its actual footprint — not an average. Imagine a system where connected tags and ambient IoT sensors record the real distance your avocado travelled, the temperature it was stored at, and the fuel used along the way.
That future requires more than accurate data — it requires a way to present complex product information clearly and consistently across millions of different items. That’s the gap ambientChat.ai fills today.
By using AI to interpret and display environmental data in natural language, our app acts as a universal presentation layer for sustainability — translating technical, product-specific information into insights that anyone can understand and act on.
We’re building toward item-level, real-world environmental data, updated automatically as goods move through the supply chain — and making it accessible to everyone, everywhere.
Why It Matters
We all make dozens of small choices every day. Seeing the footprint of each one helps us understand the shared impact we have — and the shared opportunity to reduce it. While today’s estimates aren’t perfect, they’re a step towards the clarity we need to make more sustainable decisions.
Our goal is simple:
to give every product a voice — and every person the insight to listen.
If you haven’t already done so …
download the ambientChat.ai app to see the climate impact of what you buy — and join us in building a smarter, more transparent world of food.