The ledger
We lead with honest. Carbon comes second.
These numbers keep us honest; they don't do the selling. Every figure traces back to a paper tally at the shelf: what went out, what sold, what got binned.
August 2026, all eight shelves
- Sold through
- 90%
- Sold
- 1,181 kg
- Binned anyway
- 132 kg
- First-time faces
- 768
The binned number stays on the page on purpose.
Eight shelves, one month: August 2026.
Sold-through is the number bakeries watch. First-time faces is the number we watch. Binned is the number nobody likes and everybody needs. “Posted” is the bakery's own streak: shelf days on which the photo went live on time, with closed days skipped, not broken.
| Bakery | Shelf days | Posted | Went out | Sold | Binned | Sold-through | First-time faces |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flour Power | 24 | 24/24 | 298 kg | 262 kg | 36 kg | 88% | 168 |
| Crumb & Co. | 24 | 24/24 | 236 kg | 214 kg | 22 kg | 91% | 141 |
| Bun Intended | 22 | 21/22 | 188 kg | 181 kg | 7 kg | 96% | 122 |
| The Leaning Loaf | 23 | 22/23 | 171 kg | 139 kg | 32 kg | 81% | 88 |
| Knead to Know | 20 | 20/20 | 162 kg | 155 kg | 7 kg | 96% | 96 |
| Rise & Grind | 21 | 19/21 | 104 kg | 96 kg | 8 kg | 92% | 71 |
| Sunday Sourdough | 4 | 4/4 | 93 kg | 79 kg | 14 kg | 85% | 44 |
| Iyengar's Corner evening | 12 | 12/12 | 61 kg | 55 kg | 6 kg | 90% | 38 |
| All eight | 150 | 146/150 | 1313 kg | 1181 kg | 132 kg | 90% | 768 |
Weights are from the bakery's own scale at close, rounded to the kilo. “First-time faces” is unique scans of the crate's QR stamp card plus the staff's “new faces” tap at close; both undercount, so read it as a floor and call it an estimate. Sunday Sourdough runs a Monday-only shelf. Iyengar's Corner joined mid-month with an evening shelf, same-day bakes only.
How one kilo of bread becomes 1.57 kilos of CO₂e.
Environmental claims have to be specific and substantiated: the FTC's Green Guides in the US, the CMA's Green Claims Code and the ASA in the UK, the ACCC's eight principles in Australia, the CCPA's 2024 greenwashing guidelines in India, and from 27 September 2026 an EU directive that bans generic claims outright. “Rescued” and “saved the planet” without a method are the kind of line that gets a letter. So here is the method, and it is deliberately dull.
- We count sold, not swept. A kilo that went out on the shelf and got binned at noon avoided nothing. It's in the “binned” column and nowhere else.
- One kilo of bakes, 1.57 kilos of CO₂e. That is the published life-cycle factor for bread (Poore & Nemecek, Science, 2018, via Our World in Data). Mixed bakery with butter and eggs is higher: Too Good To Go uses 2.7 kg per kilo (Blonk, 2024). We use the lower bread figure for every kilo, because a shelf is mostly bread and because an estimate should err low. The factor and its source are printed wherever the number appears.
- We don't count the shopper's walk, the coffee they bought, or landfill methane. Avoided disposal adds about 0.7 kg per kilo on the UK government's 2026 factors. It is real, and it is also where inflated numbers come from, so it stays out.
- The word is “estimated”, and the claim is specific. Kilos sold instead of binned is a fact we can show. “CO₂e avoided” is an estimate with a named factor. “Sustainable”, “green” and “planet-friendly” never appear, because from September 2026 generic claims like those are banned outright in the EU and are the first thing regulators in the UK, Australia and India ask you to prove.
Sold is good. Never baked is better.
A reliable shelf can quietly make over-baking painless, and that's the opposite of what we want. So Shelf Plus bakeries get a monthly over-bake note: the days the crate came back full, and what was in it. Bun Intended cut Tuesday croissants by a tray after two notes. That tray never got baked, and that's the kilo we're proudest of even though it never touches the ledger.
The badge
Something for the window that says exactly what it means.
Copy this, change the number, don't change the words.
“Last month our Ugly Shelf sold 262 kg of yesterday's bakes at half price instead of binning them. That's an estimated 411 kg of CO₂e avoided, counted by weight at 1.57 kg per kilo, method published. Weights are our own, from the shop scale.”
No “rescued”, no “saved the planet”, no percentages we didn't measure. It's less exciting and it's true, and true is what survives a screenshot. A study of 1,804 shoppers found authenticity framing outsold sustainability framing at every price, so the honest version is also the better sales pitch.
Make your own badgeEight shelves is a pilot. Thirty is a neighbourhood.
Every crate placed is a bakery that stops paying to throw good bread away, and a queue of new faces at its counter.
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