A Few More Points on CO2e

Let us guess! You were sipping your morning coffee with your favorite Oatly barista edition. Your thoughts were peacefully wandering when some numbers on the oat drink carton caught your eye. The CO2e label. What are those numbers really? And why haven’t you seen them on other food packages? You picked up your phone and headed over to the Oatly website and found this and this. After reading, you were still left with a few question marks and ended up on this page. Perhaps still feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the information, or perhaps endlessly curious to know more.  

But don’t worry, we got you. Below are a few commonly asked questions about our CO2e footprint finally answered. 

Where do I find information about the CO2e value for each Oatly product?  

Our aim is to be able to declare the CO2e value of all our products at the back of the pack and on our website, more specifically on the product page for whichever product you are curious to know more about. If the CO2e number is not on the website, it’s because we haven’t calculated it yet. But rest assured, we’re working on it. 

Why is it sometimes on the front and not always? 

We think it should be mandatory to declare the climate impact of food. Just as it's mandatory to declare the nutritional value of food. And we think these two should be declared at the back of the pack. Cause it kind of makes sense.  

But sometimes we put the climate impact of or products on the front of the pack, cause well, sometimes it just deserves some extra attention.   

We continuously calculate and update the CO2e value of our products, and you will always find the latest and most accurate numbers on our website. Cause updating the artwork on our packs is a longer process. And from a sustainability perspective, we of course never want to waste packaging material if it’s not absolutely necessary. 

Why do we calculate the CO2e footprint for most markets but not all? 

Our aim is to declare the CO2e value on our full range of products, but it takes significant time to collect, calculate and publish climate impact figures for our products. Aside from that, we do of course also need to keep up with our product portfolio which regularly changes on our different markets. And sometimes that takes a bit of time.

And with that, we hope that your thirst for knowledge on CO2e numbers may has been satisfied, for now. If not, or if you have additional thoughts or questions you’d like to share with us and fellow CO2e number-nerds, feel free to post them below. 

Oh and PS! A fun fact about CO2e numbers: In the end it’s all about magnitude. Not decimals. And we already know that in general animal-based products have a higher climate impact than plant-based products.*

That said, we are working hard to make our numbers as small as possible (yes, the decimals…). One of our ambitions for 2029 is to reduce our climate footprint per liter by 70% (more about this and our other ambitions you read from the Ashleys’ to-do-list).

References:

*Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216