FoodCarbon: tokenisation and blockchain for a sustainable meat industry
Sustainability is on everyone’s lips. It is invoked in speeches, campaigns and projects, but not always backed by data. When figures are lacking, the message dilutes and risks becoming greenwashing: a well-intentioned green narrative, but with little real substance. Measuring the carbon footprint allows translating environmental impact into comprehensible and comparable numbers, turning discourse into facts.
In this scenario emerges FoodCarbon, a European project that goes one step further. It uses real-time data, renewable energies and technologies like tokenisation and blockchain to transform the carbon footprint into a digital, quantifiable and traceable indicator from start to finish. Because today, sustainability is not proclaimed: it is demonstrated.
Meat industry: when the margin for change lies in energy
In a meat and sausage plant, every step counts. Chopping, marinating, mixing, stuffing, drying or curing form part of a chain of processes that can be read as a material and energy balance, expressed in kilograms of CO₂. This map allows pinpointing precisely which stages concentrate the greatest environmental impact and provides an objective basis for deciding where to act.
In the meat industry, the margin for change lies in renewable energy
However, in the traditional meat industry, the margin for manoeuvre does not always lie in the process.
Product quality depends on very precise times, temperatures and humidity conditions, difficult to modify without compromising the final result.
Here, the most effective lever is usually energy-related.
Betting on renewable sources, such as photovoltaic self-consumption, directly reduces emissions associated with electricity use, cushions energy market volatility and, moreover, strengthens the sector's sustainable positioning.
Tokenisation: turning tonnes of CO₂ into a digital asset
FoodCarbon advances in that climate management by applying tokenisation to emissions. The idea is simple and powerful: associate each kilogramme of CO₂ with a digital asset, generatable, exchangeable and easily accountable. Thus are born so-called carbon tokens, of two types. On one hand, generation tokens, which represent emissions produced by industrial activity. On the other, absorption tokens, linked to the renewable energy used in the process.
Compensation arises from the balance between both. Absorption tokens are used to neutralise part of the generation tokens, reducing the net footprint of the meat product. The result is a transparent system based on clear rules, which turns climate impact management into a measurable, controllable process integrable into the plant's daily operations.
Blockchain: the trust factor
For this system to work, credibility is key. A private database is not enough: emission and compensation operations must be recorded in a shared, auditable and manipulation-resistant environment. Only then can the data generate trust beyond the organisation itself.
FoodCarbon applies tokenisation and blockchain to obtain a verifiable carbon footprint
This is where blockchain technology comes into play. FoodCarbon uses it as a distributed ledger in which every transaction involving carbon tokens (creation, transfer or offsetting) is permanently recorded.
Records are linked together; they cannot be altered without leaving a trace and allow for full end-to-end traceability.
The result is a verifiable carbon footprint, which is based not only on internal statements or static reports, but on accessible and verifiable evidence.
FoodCarbon: from theory to industrial plant
FoodCarbon does not stop at the conceptual level. Through this project, Izertis is validating these capabilities in a real industrial environment, taking meat product manufacturing as the main use case. The aim is to demonstrate that it is possible to integrate data measurement, tokenisation and blockchain traceability into complex processes, without altering plant operations or compromising final product quality.
As specific objectives, the project focuses on capturing data directly from the plant to convert it into carbon footprint indicators per stage and per product, designing a compensation system supported by renewable generation models and offering a transparent and auditable record of the entire process.
Over the coming months, this work will materialise in a proof of concept and a first functional prototype, designed as a prelude to its deployment in real industrial scenarios.
This project is being co-funded by the Government of the Principality of Asturias through the 2024 call for R&D projects by SEKUENS, and by the European Union through the FEDER (file no. IDE/2024/000483).