Francesca Kennedy Wallbank (Co-CEO) | David Rodrigues (Co-CEO)

CarbonBright’s vision is to be the world's largest and most trusted source of accurate product sustainability data built on global industry standards.

1.   Describe the problem/the industry that you are trying to mediate (and precise the UN SDG-s you are solving).

CarbonBright is tackling the crucial need for measuring the environmental impact of products within the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry.  Across the globe consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) companies are increasingly under pressure to make their products more sustainable. To achieve global climate goals while meeting growing demand, companies need to significantly cut their greenhouse-gas emissions, particularly within their supply chains where up to 90% of their overall environmental impact is embedded. However, measuring product level emissions using current approaches is extremely time-consuming, costly, and not scalable across the thousands of suppliers and millions of products sold through their complex supply chains. 

CarbonBright's B2B SaaS platform offers an automated solution for calculating product-level impact metrics at scale. By combining one of the largest proprietary databases of product and supply chain data, with an environmental modeling engine built on artificial intelligence, we’re able to instantly measure a product’s impact using a bottoms-up approach,  even when primary data is fragmented or missing.  CarbonBright’s platform immediately provides transparency into product environmental impact across thousands of products, and as a result, it's faster, easier, and more cost effective for organizations in the CPG industry to identify their emissions 'hotspots', and take action to transform the sustainability of their products.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

• 9 - Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

• 12 - Responsible Consumption & Production

• 13 - Climate Action

• 15 - Promoting Sustainable use of Terrestrial Ecosystems 

2.   How did the idea to create the company come to mind? How did your team come to be?

Our founders came together with a common mission to address climate change - having met through a sustainability focused program in Cambridge, UK and other climate related networks. Through our first hand experience working at companies such as Unilever, we realized that the problem of measuring product environmental impact across large numbers of products could not be achieved with current approaches.  Leveraging our respective expertise in consumer packaged goods, data-driven SaaS and machine learning, we formulated our vision on solving the problem. We knew that it would require an ambitious approach, and the power of technologies like artificial intelligence to solve it at scale. We joined forces to start CarbonBright to inspire an evolution in how brands, retailers and global supply chains can produce more sustainable products, positively impact the lives of billions of people, and protect the natural world.

3.   Why did you choose to participate in the Paris Techstars accelerator program? What are you looking forward to the most?

We applied to join Techstars Sustainability Paris because of its focus on Sustainability and alignment with our mission. It was important to surround ourselves with mentors, companies and partners that shared our vision. As a top tier accelerator we also felt that Techstars would be able to amplify our impact, helping us to advance our business, build out a network of potential customers and impact investors, and develop momentum for raising our seed round. We are most excited about working alongside the 11 other companies in our cohort that are innovating in climate. It's both inspiring as well as rewarding to support our fellow cohort members as we all work through the challenges of strengthening our businesses.    

4.   What are you the most proud of in your initial journey with your company?

What we are attempting to build is no easy feat. We have proven that we can do Lifecycle analysis to a stringent ISO standard without the need for lengthy and costly consulting engagements. And that alone is mindblowing to our customers - one of which is a Top 10 UK Retailer.  We've proven that we can extract primary data from thousands of siloed sources without our customers having to gather the data from their suppliers. We’ve proven that we can fill gaps in data instantly, leveraging sophisticated machine-learning based models. We’ve proven that a tech-based solution is more scalable & more accurate than human calculations - all with technology that didn’t even exist last year!

5.   How do you plan to measure the positive impact of your company in the next 5 years?

As an impact focused company, CarbonBright is committed to make a positive impact both socially and environmentally. We have committed to remove 100 Mt CO2e out of the atmosphere over the next decade.  We achieve this by empowering our Customers to make informed decisions that foster the widespread adoption of sustainable practices.Through our data-driven insights, customers can quickly identify areas where they can reduce the product-level emissions within their supply chains, and redesign the products they sell to align with more sustainable standards. Additionally, our platform's ability to identify sustainable alternatives contribute to the conservation of natural resources, such as water and energy, thereby promoting the use of more environmentally-conscious solutions.

For the latest news on our applications, please visit our page.

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