New Version Features Over 70 Additional Foodware and Food Packaging Products
Just six months after its initial release on August 19, 2021, a new and improved version of the Understanding Packaging (UP) Scorecard has been released. The new version features a strengthened methodology and improved user experience and features over 70 additional foodware and food packaging products.
The UP Scorecard is a revolutionary free online resource that can help concert and sports venues, restaurants, and other businesses choose plastic-free and sustainable packaging for food and drinks and is the result of an unprecedented cross-industry collaboration of leading foodservice companies, environmental NGOs, and technical experts.
What is the Up Scorecard & What is this New Version?
The UP Scorecard measures commonly used foodware and food packaging products with a single yardstick to offer companies the first-ever, free, and comprehensive tool for making sustainable purchasing decisions.
With version 0.2, you can now score over 70 additional foodware and food packaging products including cups, plates, trays, bowls, ramekins, takeout containers, lids, utensils, and more. This update also features a strengthened methodology and improved user experience, so it’s as easy to use as possible.
Although still in a beta stage (v0.2), this new version has been significantly expanded and improved. A summary of the biggest new features and improvements made include:
- More Use Cases and Products. Over 70 additional foodware and food packaging products were added into the tool and can now be assessed. These include cups, plates, trays, bowls, ramekins, takeout containers, lids, and utensils.
- Customize and Compare Any Product. Users can now customize individual products, including their number of reuses, recycled content, transportation distance from the supplier, recycling and composting eligibility, sourcing certifications, and being free of chemicals of concern. These customized products are now displayed separately on the results page for easier comparison, and a preview of the updated scores is shown directly on the customization page when adjusting a product’s parameters.
- Improved Tool Functionality. The presentation and navigation across various pages within the tool have been simplified.
- Enhanced Transparency and User Information. Additional product details are now visible on the customize page for each product, including a short product description, the average product dimensions used for the impact calculations, and the number of underlying measurements used to define these.
- Adjustments in the Chemicals of Concern (Coc) Metric: The calculation of the CoC score has been updated to add (instead of multiply) the two sub-scores involved. This means the CoC score now exists within a smaller range of 2 (worst) to 20 (best), which allows users to more significantly improve the score for a product if it can be declared as free of chemicals of concern.
For a more detailed overview of these and other new features and changes, see the UP Scorecard’s change log. Do you have questions about how the UP Scorecard works or how it could help you? Be sure to take a look at the new Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. An updated version of the methodology document has also been released that explains in detail all of the data sources and calculations used to calculate each score.
Acknowledgments
The Single-Use Materials Decelerator (SUM’D) team (of which Plastic Pollution Coalition is a part) would like to thank everyone who shared feedback with us on the first version of the UP Scorecard. Many of these suggestions have already been incorporated, and there are still others we are working to take on board in future versions. If you have any feedback to share on this new version, please do so using this online form.
We are excited to share this new version with you and hope you are looking forward to using it!
