Carbon Food Print

A Case Study of the Garuso Research Project

Motivation

In Switzerland, the consumption of food is responsible for one sixth of the climate gas emissions of Swiss households. While daily producing millions of meals especially catering companies have a good leverage to reduce negative climate impact.

Problem

Possibilities to take climate relevant information into account when planning meals are very limited and time consuming for meal planners. Therefore, the capacity and motivation to do so are rather low.

Overall Solution

A software system that is integrated into the current work process of meal planners shall calculate and display the carbon footprint of ingredients, specifically the CO2 that is emitted by producing and transporting the ingredients. Thereby, game-based mechanics shall motivate and support the meal planners to select the correspondent ingredients.

Our Goal

Our goal is to uncover sustainability requirements, particularly the ones related to positive enabling effects i.e., requirements of the software system that motivate and support the meal planners to change their work routines towards climate friendly choices.

Our Approach

We conducted 1 contextual inquiry, 18 semi-structure interviews, and published an online questionnaire from which we could use the results of 60 participants.

The used interview questions can be found here. The used questionnaire questions can be found here.

Partners

This case study is done in collaboration with Eaternity, Compass Group (Switzerland) and was partially funded by Gebert Rüf Stiftung.