PlateA

Core Features

PlateA combines standardized LCA indicators with context-specific metrics tailored to each food-service operation. Recipes are assessed ingredient by ingredient, with results aggregated into a PlateA Score for comparing dishes within the same menu. Its capabilities include:

• Ingredient-Level LCA: PlateA calculates impacts ingredient by ingredient, accounting for quantities and aggregating the results at dish level. Its methodology can encompass raw-material production, processing, packaging, transport, cooking and serving.

• Context-Specific Sustainability Indicators: Operators can supplement standardized indicators such as Global Warming Potential, water use and eutrophication with their own metrics. These must use explicit formulas and documented sources, allowing issues particular to the establishment to form part of the assessment.

• PlateA Menu Score: Multiple indicators are normalized and combined into a score ranging from 0.5 to 5. Importantly, the score is intended to compare dishes within the same menu, not to rank one restaurant against another. Individual indicator results remain available alongside the overall score.

• High-Impact Ingredient Identification: PlateA helps operators identify which ingredients contribute most strongly to a dish’s environmental impact. This makes the assessment useful for menu engineering and recipe optimization rather than simply producing an environmental score for disclosure.

• Customer-Facing Sustainability Communication: Results can be incorporated into physical menus, digital displays and online ordering systems. Individual indicators include units, explanations and interpretation guidance intended to make the underlying sustainability information understandable to diners.

• Calculation Traceability: Calculations remain traceable back to their underlying data sources. PlateA's standardized indicators use established LCA methodologies and databases.

Closing Insights

EcoLoop and WALD developed and tested PlateA between September 2025 and March 2026 through TASTE (Transformative Approaches for Sustainable Food in Tourism), piloting it at Rifugio Telegrafo “Gaetano Barana” in the Italian Alps. The European Commission-funded project brings together partners from six countries, while PlateA draws on European LCA methodologies and databases and is designed to support transparent, substantiated environmental communication.

PlateA’s strength is its narrow focus on food service. Rather than functioning as general carbon-accounting software, it helps operators measure dishes at ingredient level, identify opportunities to improve recipes and menus, and communicate results to customers. Crucially, its scores compare dishes within the same establishment, avoiding potentially misleading comparisons between very different restaurants and operating environments.