New Store in Sweden Prices Foods Based on Climate Impact

Swedish food brand Felix recently opened “The Climate Store,” a grocery store where items are priced based on their carbon footprint. The currency at the grocery store is carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) and customers have a weekly budget of 18.9 kg CO2e. Pricing items in this way highlights the true impact of food production on the climate and creates distinctions between the environmental footprint of plant-based foods (low impact) and animal products (high impact). 

“It will be exciting to see how customers react to trading with the CO2e currency and see if they manage to stay within their weekly budget,” Felix Marketing Manager Thomas Sjöberg said. “I think it will be an eye opener for many to see how certain choices affect what [they] can afford to get in the same lunch bag.”

The grocery store is an interactive part of a new initiative Felix will implement this fall where it will affix labels to its products—which include vegetarian ready-to-cook meals, instant mashed potatoes, lingonberry jam, and salad dressings—that indicate their climate impact to encourage consumers to choose plant-based foods.