Spotted: Surveys consistently show that many consumers are highly motivated to make more sustainable choices, but they don’t always know the best way to go about it. For example, when grocery shopping, there is often a lack of information around the sustainability of individual products. To help, Austrian startup inoqo has developed an app that can tell users the CO2 impact of their individual grocery purchases and help shoppers to make more informed choices. 

The inoqo app uses proprietary technology and publically available data to passively track the user’s grocery basket—without the need to scan individual items—and inform them about relevant factors such as the carbon dioxide impact of their purchase. It can then recommend alternative products with a lower impact. The app also includes features that encourage users to make more sustainable choices through personalised content, gamification, and community challenges.

In addition, inoqo allows users to specify their sustainability goals and values, such as avoiding products containing palm oil. The app will then provide feedback whenever a chosen product does not match the values of the user – if it contains palm oil for example. It will also analyse the user’s consumer behaviour to let them know how much it has helped. For example, if the user buys organic products, the app might tell them how much bee habitat they have preserved. Users can also take up challenges, such as reducing meat consumption or buyng only organic products.

At Springwise, we have spotted many innovations aiming to make it easier to make sustainable choices, from a virtual shopping assistant that makes it easier to find secondhand deals to a platform that has developed a sustainability scoring system. 

Written By: Lisa Magloff