Change Log

A summary of the updates made within each released version of the UP Scorecard

Version 0.4 (November 23, 2023)

  • Users can now create their own private account. This function allows the user to save customized products, portfolios of products, and newly defined foodstuffs. The users can continue to work with their own data at a later stage. Full use of the tool is still possible as a guest without the need to create a user account. A user account is however required for the use of the portfolio function.
  • The landing page has been adapted accordingly, with the possibility to sign in as a guest or with a user account. To create an account, a registration form must be filled in providing basic information about the user.
  • The COC scoring methodology has been improved. In addition to the potential presence of COCs and the inertness of the packaging material, the scoring now takes into account the impact that the type of food and its storage conditions can have on the migration of COCs (including non-intentionally added substances). The user can select the foodstuff to be packaged from a predefined list, or they can create a new food by describing it via a set of six criteria (storage time, storage temperature, fat content, acidity, contact type, and typical packaging size).
  • Users now have the ability to create and save portfolios comprising multiple products to represent entire business units, such as restaurants or cafeterias, which are then scored as a whole. 
  •  A benchmarking system has been implemented that allows the comparison to other portfolios.
  • To improve consistency, the raw scores for each of the six metrics are now all the same in that a lower raw score always represents better performance. However, the calculation approach for the summary score remains the same (a higher final summary score represents better performance).
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Version 0.3 (October 19, 2022)

  • Additional geographic regions can now be implemented in the backend of the tool (if the necessary data describing the region is available). The regionalized data includes life cycle inventory and impact information such as local electricity grids and default recycled content and recycling rates, as well as end-of-life treatment descriptors such as recovery and disposal parameters.
  • The two new regions “Europe average” and “Global average” have been added to the tool (in addition to the already existing “United States average” region) and can be selected by the user for the assessment.
  • An additional function for creating new and customized products was implemented. This function allows the user to create new products based on the commonly used materials already available in the tool. These new products can then be easily assessed and compared with existing products already available by default.
  • The normalization for all six metrics has been harmonized to make comparing results simpler. For the normalization, the best possible product (i.e. a product without impacts) is now used as a reference point for all scores. The scale for all normalized scores has been harmonized to always be from 1 (worst score) to 100 (best score).
  • Landing page: The first page of the tool was adapted to the design of the website and now directly contains the first step (selection of the region) in the workflow of the tool.
  • Results page: The presentation of the product scores has been adapted and simplified to make it more intuitive.
    • Normalized scores are now shown as numerical values (and still with an easy-to-understand color scale). This makes the scores directly comparable between the different metrics. For the quantitative metrics (Plastic Pollution, Climate, Water Use), the raw scores are shown additionally.
    • The icon to indicate limited availability of underlying data for the Chemicals of Concern score has been changed from a hatch pattern to an empty circle with colored, dashed outline.
    • The summary scores are now presented as doughnut charts. This was done to distinguish the summary score from the other metrics and allow easier visual interpretation.
    • Column headings have been redesigned to be more streamlined.
  • Guidance within the tool has been adapted and/or supplemented in order to simplify provided instructions and background information, as well as to adapt them to the recently added features.
  • To make the UP Scorecard easily usable globally and to simplify comparisons, all units have been changed to standard metric units across the tool, including in product descriptions.

Version 0.2 (February 25, 2022)

  • Additional use cases and products have been integrated and can now be assessed. This includes over 70 newly added foodware and food packaging products including cups, plates, trays, bowls, ramekins, takeout containers, lids, and utensils.
  • Results page: highlighting of reusable options with a turquoise bar, includes new navigation points for each product, offers ability to change the column sorting, displays “# of uses” and “% recycled content” for each product, includes legend adjustments and highlighting of product names.
  • Customize page: offers composting and recycling settings as pop-up window, includes improvements in the arrangements of the individual elements.
  • Composting and recycling page: improved the arrangement of settings for composting and recycling as a list and with collapsable material sections.
  • Introduction pages: consolidates and simplifies these pages.
  • Display of customized products on the results page and labeled through the addition of “(Custom)” in the product name. Allows easy comparison between the default version and the user’s customized version.
  • Immediate preview of updated scores when changing parameters on the customize page.
  • Users are required to choose at least one reusable option to continue with the comparison of products.
  • Ability to clear previous settings and reset back to the defaults from a previous session directly on the tool’s packaging selection page.
  • Display of additional product details on the customize page, including a short product description, the average product dimensions used for the calculation, and the number of underlying measurements.
  • Shows a pop-up warning when switching between the US average and the custom recoverability settings.
  • Chemicals of Concern (CoC)
    • The tiered list of chemicals used within the metric has been renamed as the “Food Chemicals of Concern (FCOC) List.”
    • The equation defining the calculation of the overall CoC score has been updated (applies addition instead of multiplication of the sub-scores). The total CoC score now exists with a range of 2 (worst) to 20 (best).
  • For the three qualitative metrics (Chemicals of Concern, Recoverability, Sustainable Sourcing), the calculation of the relative score has changed (the relative score determines the icon shown – red, orange, yellow, light green, or green).  Previously, the relative score was determined the same way for all metrics: based on the ranges of scores for all products within a use case. Now, for the qualitative metrics, the normalized score is based on the min and max possible score for each metric. The relative score calculation for the quantitative metrics (Plastic Pollution, Climate, Water) is unchanged. See the Scoring section in the Methodology document for details.
  • Placement of a disclaimer of liability on the results page.
  • This version (v0.2) is being released under a proprietary (“all rights reserved”) license of use. See the Terms and Conditions page.
  • Various edits and bug fixes including typos and backend corrections.

Version 0.1 (July 20, 2021)

The first version of the UP Scorecard was released to the public.

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