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 : completed
- Funding partner : SNSF (SNF-Projektförderung / Projekt Nr. 197633)
- 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.