Matthew Isaacs founded My Emissions to develop a carbon labelling system for food products and meals, so that consumers could start making food choices based on sustainability as well as nutrition.
Since winning the Innovate UK Young Innovators Award, Matthew and the My Emissions team have seen success after success. Matthew credits his Innovation Champion, who was assigned to him through the Young Innovators Award, with empowering him to envision an ambitious future for My Emissions and described his connection to Innovate UK as “incredibly helpful” in unlocking a wealth of partnership and growth opportunities.
Matthew’s successes include being recognised by Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, successfully forging a dizzying array of new partnerships, and showcasing his carbon labelling at one of football’s biggest events.
JustEat and The Champions League
The confidential ‘household name’ partnership that Matthew mentioned in his first success story was none other than JustEat. It was through this successful partnership that My Emissions had the opportunity to debut carbon labelling at the UEFA Champions League Final at the iconic Wembley Stadium.
“A competition called Champions Innovate was run by UEFA for the first time this year, and we were invited to apply,” Matthew said. “We ended up being the overall winners of the programme. The goal was to bring healthy and sustainable food to the Champions League Final, and we did that in a number of ways.”
The monumental event saw the premiere of My Emissions’ AI recipe generator.
“In addition to Wembley’s own food vendors, this work spanned 25 food trucks across a variety of fan zones, where data collection was more difficult. So, we built our AI recipe generator, which was able to estimate emissions from the information the trucks had already submitted to UEFA. All we had to do was sense check, but that was the first version and now we’re scaling that philosophy,” Matthew explained.
The impact of carbon labelling has huge potential to revolutionise how we see our food choices.
“We calculated that during the Champions League final, if just 3,000 of the 500,000 fans who saw our labels chose a chicken burger over beef, it would save the equivalent emissions of powering Wembley Stadium for the 90-minute match,” Matthew said.
Building the company customers want
The successful collaboration with UEFA revealed an unexplored avenue for having a bigger environmental impact, inspiring a fresh direction for My Emissions.
“The thing we’re most proud of is the work we did behind the scenes with the caterers and food trucks – the reporting and insights so that food producers can reduce their emissions. The carbon labelling is just one piece that comes out of the end of that,” Matthew explained.
“The biggest impact is from the companies themselves, when the chefs and recipe development teams take our insights and change their recipes. The slight shift in our messaging away from carbon labelling is because it’s in the B2B platform for food companies that the real opportunity lives.”
The company’s new direction taught Matthew a valuable lesson about entrepreneurship.
“We started making the company we wanted as consumers, but the more we spoke to food companies, the more we realised there was a greater need. A piece of advice I’d give to anyone starting up is to constantly learn from your customers, what their biggest pain points and challenges are, and build the company your customer needs,” he said.
Developing as an entrepreneur
Matthew noted significant growth in confidence and assertiveness since winning the Young Innovators Award.
The biggest lesson is that your most finite resource is time, and therefore the most important thing to think about is, what’s the most valuable thing you can do with your time to move the company forward? I better understand that now and have more conviction in the things I need to be doing.
Time has also given Matthew a different perspective on being a young innovator.
“You have to go through a learning curve even if you’re starting a business at 50, but I do think you go through more development as a young innovator. But it shouldn’t put anyone off, because the only way to get to where I am now is to go through that process,” Matthew reflected.
“You can get really good advisory networks to help you. There can be elements of thinking you know everything. You don’t, and it should be a lifelong thing of wanting to learn.”
Being a young innovator has benefits, too: “You can move better with the times. With everything that’s happening with AI now, it’s been easier for us to be an early adopter of that and embrace the new technology. As a young person, you’re quicker to just do something, move fast and see what happens,” Matthew added.
What’s next for My Emissions?
My Emissions has partnered with Arsenal F.C to carbon label the menus at the Emirates Stadium and has forged a historic partnership with the Government of Jersey, to launch Plate to Planet – the world’s first government-led trial of carbon labelling in the hospitality sector.
Most recently, Matthew teamed up with UEFA and Just Eat once again – to carbon label food menus at every Women’s Euro 2025 match, reaching over 500,000 European football fans throughout the tournament!
With their model perfected and proven at scale, there’s nothing but growth in My Emissions’ future.
“We recently raised a successful £1.3 million seed round. We’ve got the ability to work with basically any food company, so we’re on the journey to 100 customers, then 1,000, then 10,000. We’re on that train, looking to grow,” Matthew said.