ShopHero
Food Waste Quantification in Households
At a glance
- Project leader : Sybilla Merian, Prof. Nadina Müller, Matthias Stucki
- Co-project leader : Dr. Claudio Beretta
- Deputy of project leader : René Itten
- Project budget : CHF 94'725
- Project status : ongoing
- Funding partner : SNSF (SNF-Projektförderung / Projekt Nr. 197633)
- Project partner : Universität Zürich
- Contact person : Claudio Beretta
Description
The research collaboration ‘ShopHero’ proposes a novel, scalable
and tailored approach for consumers (1) to track and monitor the
sustainability of their groceries and food waste, and therefore,
(2) to change their behavior. We plan to process
automatically-collected digital receipts from grocery purchases to
calculate households’ and individual environmental impact, estimate
food-wasting behavior and tailor adaptive interventions. Thereby,
we aim to assess the method’s accuracy, scalability, efficacy, and
its ability to reach previously uninvolved users, while also
contributing to the understanding of the sustainability of
different food items and consumers’ food waste. The project is
divided into three work packages (WP). The goal of WP1 is to create
a prediction model for food waste. It is planned to recruit 600
participants who share their digital shopping receipts history and
complete a questionnaire regarding household characteristics and
food waste behavior. This allows us to gain insights into what
drives food waste and to design interventions in a subsequent work
package. In WP2, the goal is to validate food waste measures used
in WP1, to develop new valid and sparse methods of food waste
measurement and to extend our database with sustainability aspects
(e.g., CO2-footprint, packaging, labels). We do this by extending
existing models of food waste quantification with a special focus
on how self-reported amounts relate to the real amounts of food
wasted. In WP3 we aim to test various interventions for reducing
food waste by testing the causality between shopping behavior and
actual food-wasting behavior studied in WP1 and WP2.
The group of food technology at ZHAW is mainly responsible for food
waste quantification.