Green Betty – Making sustainability visible on the plate

With the Green Betty project, Betty Bossi and ZHAW are highlighting the environmental impact of recipes and promoting ecologically sustainable cooking in everyday life. Automated life cycle assessments based on the menu sustainability index inspire users to make more conscious decisions when cooking.

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Description

Food is available in Switzerland at all times – regardless of season or origin. This carefree approach to our current eating habits comes at the cost of enormous resource consumption: in Switzerland, around 28% of environmental pollution is attributable to ‘food’.

In the Green Betty project, the culinary company Betty Bossi is working with ZHAW to make the ecological sustainability of recipes transparent. The Menu Sustainability Index (MNI) developed at ZHAW is used for this purpose. It assesses both the environmental impact and the nutritional quality of menus.

The aim is to create automated life cycle assessments for every Betty Bossi dish. The sustainability ratings are displayed directly alongside the digital recipes and are intended to motivate users to make more conscious decisions and try out environmentally friendly recipes. In addition, the results are fed into Betty Bossi's internal recipe management system so that the ecological aspects of ingredients can be taken into account when recipes are created.