Key points:

• Mastercard's pilot with Vela proved that sustainable choice interventions—rewarding people for lower carbon footprint food purchases—avoided 158.46 kg of carbon dioxide and increased transactions by 9.8%, demonstrating clear business value alongside carbon emissions impact.

• Avoided emissions measurement unlocks new business opportunities. Vela users spent 5.5% more per basket.

• Through Mastercard’s joint action project for The Climate Pledge, signatories show that measuring avoided emissions gives companies the data to prove the return on investment of pursuing sustainable consumption programs, and make the business case for consumer choice interventions at scale.

How sustainable choice interventions can shift consumer behavior

If you want to change your behavior, you must first become aware of it. That’s the inspiration behind a pilot program launched in 2025 by Mastercard and Vela, a platform that rewards users for making healthier, more responsible shopping decisions.

The pilot took place at select dining halls across a London university and incentivized students to buy food with a lower carbon footprint—swapping a hamburger for a plant-based meal, for example. Students earned points through Vela’s loyalty program that they could then exchange for prizes like discounted e-bike rentals and Uber Eats vouchers. After 111 days, the pilot found that the students ate and drank products with lower emissions profiles. And the implications are promising. If 100,000 new users avoided emissions at the same average rate as the pilot’s participants, the program could prevent the equivalent of about 58 metric tons of CO₂ annually.

Students were also eager to visit dining halls where they could collect points, and they made 9.8% more transactions at these locations per month while using the app. The results indicate that raising awareness of how certain foods can affect the environment while rewarding choices with less impact can yield real change.

How did the loyalty program incentivize lower carbon footprint choices?

Here’s how the pilot worked: When students entered a participating dining hall, they were invited to download the Vela app. As they paid for food, the students earned points they could redeem for rewards, with higher points awarded for lower-emission food choices. 

Mastercard supported the project through its Start Path startup engagement program, contributing loyalty design expertise and scale infrastructure to develop commercially viable concepts that inspire, inform, and enable more sustainable consumption.

Vela’s loyalty program and the Foodsteps database, which calculates the carbon intensity of foods based on inputs like farming, packaging, processing, and transport, helped power the pilot. Climate Pledge signatory Compass Group, the university’s caterers, facilitated the pilot environment in its dining halls, while students generated and shared first-party transaction data.

It’s the kind of collaboration that’s characteristic of The Climate Pledge’s joint action projects, in which two or more Pledge signatories work together to tackle some of Earth’s biggest environmental challenges. 

Utilizing a measurement methodology based on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s work on avoided emissions, the World Resources Institute established that students in the pilot collectively avoided the equivalent of 158.46 kilograms of CO₂, about as much as driving a vehicle with tailpipe emissions 400 miles. The commercial impact was strong: Vela users spent 5.5% more per basket.

What new business opportunities does avoided emissions measurement unlock?

This isn’t an isolated pilot. In 2026, the Mastercard joint action project supported meat substitute company Quorn to understand the impact of the brand’s partnership with the National Health Service (NHS) in England. QuornPro, its food service division, provides its ground substitute meat to NHS catering partners, which then blend it into dishes like cottage pie, chilli, and lasagna with animal-based meat at a 50:50 ratio.

That means NHS patients, staff, and visitors can eat the same familiar dishes with lower carbon footprints. Modeling estimates that a 20% shift of the 140 million meals served in blended products across NHS in England could avoid the equivalent of approximately 47,600 metric tons of CO₂ each year and save at least £1.12 million in food costs.

Why should businesses invest in avoided emissions measurement?

The emissions measurement pilots with Vela and Quorn show that with access to data on avoided emissions, companies at different points in the food value chain can understand the return on investment, pursue new business opportunities, and demonstrate the value of sustainable choices to business teams, clients, and consumers.

Learn more about The Climate Pledge’s joint action projects.