CO2 Campus (Greenbites)

Overarching Goal: To understand the big picture of FS and its suppliers.

Subgoal 1: To understand the current Monitoring situation in FS. Method – 1-on-1 interviews.

Subgoal 2: To Understand the relationship between FS, Cirfood, and other local food suppliers. Methods – stakeholder mapping.

Subgoal 3: Understand the current workflow of the local suppliers including methods and tools. Method – Day in the life (not used).

Stakeholder Map: The stakeholder map shows the actors who are involved in the food supply chain of HvA. It also shows the contributions by percentage, of each sector of the food supply chain.

Concern Map: The concern map is a graphical representation of our major findings and key insights from our translate sessions as well as the other interviews that we conducted in sprint 1 with all our stakeholders.

There were different perspectives on the challenge of developing a monitoring system to track and measure CO2 emissions. Some outstanding comments include the following:

1. That local suppliers often make small purchases from several different suppliers and this makes it a challenge to secure relevant purchase data which can be used for Co2 monitoring.
2. That protein transition, which is one of the main objectives of FS after CO2 tracking can only be successful if the university community is willing to accept these changes.
3. That students may patronize other restaurants outside the university community for their protein preferences, hence, the need to first focus on behavioural change that can strengthen policy changes.
4. From our partner, we understood that behavioural change is already being tackled in a different project, and the team should continue to focus on developing a monitoring system, majorly because this report is needed for the decision-making body of the university on the matter of sustainability.

The planning and execution of sprint 1 goals within the short time frame available challenged us as a team, both physically and mentally.

We had some challenges with our sprint planning and time management. This meant we had to work extra hard in the last week of our sprint. We equally had the challenge of visualizing our findings to our partners vis our concern map.

The eventual high for us was that we were able to agree on a method of visualization, and were ready for our sprint review/presentation.

We were also able to have some important conversations about team relationship and bonding, and we are being intentional about this in Sprint 2.

Overall Goal: To learn, analyze, and summarize CO2 emission monitoring systems currently on the market.

Subgoal 1: Research case studies of how CO2 emissions have been tracked within food systems on a large scale.

Subgoal 1 Task 1: Benchmarking: Study other Cities/Universities/Companies already measuring and tracking CO2 food footprint and learn from them.

Subgoal 1 Task 2: Go further to discuss with experts identified in task 1 to see how they make their measurements, understand their database system, and how they worked with local suppliers (where applicable).

Subgoal 2: To find out how to obtain purchase data from local suppliers and or possible alternatives for this.

Subgoal 2 Task 1: To define the kind of “Purchase data” that we need.

Subgoal 2 Task 2: Hold conversations again with Local suppliers at Roeterseiland to determine the possibility of obtaining purchase data from them, what difficulties they face in doing this and possible solutions.

Subgoal 2 task 3: In continuation of subgoal 1 task 2, discuss further with experts to learn feasible methods of motivating local suppliers to provide needed data. Alternatively, we want to know other ways we can measure CO2 emissions without using purchase data.

Subgoal 3: Visualize the different systems discovered in subgoal 1 to compare and summarize.

In sprint 2, we carried out an internet search of Universities and consulting companies that have worked in this field. Below is a summary of the different universities and the methods they have employed in measuring CO2 emissions in their own unique contexts.

University of Wageningen – Employs the LCA methodology in CO2 emission calculation. It is also important to offer incentives to suppliers and provide guidance to them about sustainability reporting. Building strong relationships with suppliers will foster a culture of transparency.

Fooditis – uses purchase data obtained from their main suppliers namely Sligro, Bidfood and their local suppliers. They employ government databases and industry reports, various sources to calculate CO2 emissions. Some information retrieved includes the amount of energy required to produce food and the transportation methods of the food.  

University of Eindoven –  Has two catering service providers who provide sales data every three months with equivalent CO2 measurements. They also take into account the location and season of the products purchased.  

Pre-Sustainability.nl – Uses the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method of measurement fused with a database in a software format. This database requires a license to be accessible after purchase. The recommendation for our team was to use information from scientific literature and existing open-source databases to calculate CO2 emissions from suppliers’ recipes for example. We can consult the National database of the Netherlands and the globally accessible database as well. Additionally, an estimation of the electricity used in the food production process can be included.

Key Takeaways

What kind of Data can we utilize to measure CO2 emissions?

The image above presents a summary of our findings as the answers to our most pressing questions.

1. We can use available information from sales data. This, in combination with some websites and open-access databases available on the internet, can provide us with some CO2 values from estimated calculations.
2. Sales Data + Recipes: This is a combination of daily or monthly sale information with the CO2 estimates of the standard recipes from food vendors. This method is more accurate, especially in instances where there is little or no food waste in the production process.
3. Purchase Data: Provides detailed information about food items purchased and the source. This is very important because the distance travelled by a product from the farm to the final consumer, in addition to the method of transportation, contributes significantly to the final CO2 scores.
4. Purchase Data + Commodity Barcode: This combines purchase information as described previously with a barcode which provides other details of the item such as source, etc. This is the most accurate of all four methods as listed above.

What is Purchase Data? Part of our sprint goals was to define for ourselves the meaning of purchase data and how to identify one when we come across it. For easy understanding, we decided that any data that provides information about the product name, the quantity of product purchased, the source of product and the method of delivery is sufficient information as purchase data. Other details such as product origin, allergens, energy consumption, can be added later.

Overall Goal: To design a demo platform (prototype) showing fields for measuring CO2 emissions at UvA/HvA.

Subgoal 1: Collect a sample of Purchasing/Sales data and corresponding recipes from local ondernemers of the Roeterseiland Campus.

Subgoal 2: Undertake an empathy journey to understand user journeys and their personas. This information will inform further design ideation.

Subgoal 3: Create the visual and wireframe of the prototype (a platform to calculate CO2 measurement).

Our journey in Sprint 3 was centred around several milestones outlined below.

CASE STUDY MONITORING TOOLS – what features are offered in these monitoring tools that would be useful for our web platform? We looked at these platforms and selected features needed in the dashboard such as CO2 ranking for ingredients and products, CO2 benchmarking for progress tracking, and CO2 emission per product category. We also determined what data is required for the monitoring system. These are classified into purchase information vis product name and the quantity purchased, ingredient information, food wastage and packaging, etc.

USER UNDERSTANDING – We designed a flow chart showing the relationship of our stakeholders and their possible interactions with the monitoring tool/platform that we are developing. In addition, we also made persona maps for FS and CIRFOOD and journey maps to better understand suppliers (CIRFOOD and Local Ondernemers) and identify opportunities for intervention with our product.

RECOMMENDATIONS – The following were our recommendations based on our findings from the above processes such as:

1. Providing multiple options for uploading purchase data using an Excel format or digital invoice capture.
2. A basic version with a database that provides procurement (purchase) information that suppliers can preselect. The information can be matched with an official database to measure CO2 emissions.

• A dashboard with overview and insights (as described under monitoring tools) to enable decision-making for both FS and suppliers.

PROTOTYPE – For our prototype, we have designed dashboards in Figma for sample viewing and feedback.

Overall Goal: To design a minimum viable prototype for test CO2 calculations, simplify the prototype (in Figma) for usability testing, document the entire process and prepare for the final showcase.

Subgoals: 

1: Understand the issues and gaps in purchase data and identify data required for CO2 calculation;

2: Design a minimum viable prototype showing a list of ingredients/products and their CO2 measurements (using the RIVM official database);

3: Simplify the prototype for usability testing.

• We simplified our prototype and visited the Local Ondernemers for usability testing and feedback.
• We have looked at available data and provided suggestions on extracting data using technology and from various sources.
• We made a minimal functional product (MVP), using real data, to test our prototype and methodology.
• 

• Minimum Valuable Product (MVP)

Our main goal for the final sprint was to communicate our findings to the outer world in a way that is easy to understand.

We wanted to share the journey of the food we eat and show how it impacts our daily lives. We equally shared our solutions for businesses (in the food and hospitality sector).

For our final showcase, we had the following communication materials:

• Posters
• Video
• Hi-Fi Prototype and of course, a fun game!
• You may access and view our Hi-Fi prototype here.

Below we present our journey via this poster presentation.

Here is what our partner had to say about our work so far:

“Measuring the CO² emission of all the food and drink business on the 7 campuses of the University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is a challenging project for Facility Services of UvA and HvA. Especially since many different entrepreneurs are involved, each with their own and often different suppliers and systems. We asked Digital Society School to help us. Bernice, Namratha, Shuai, Maryam and Yasunari took up the challenge as a team of trainees at DSS, together with my colleague Suus in the DTD roll.

Working through many difficulties along the way – “trust the process”- the team has provided us with a promising vision and MVP. We will be working with a second team from DSS starting in September to bring the project and solution to the next level.

 It is really good to work with students, trainees and researchers within our own organization to help us solve the more complex questions we face and help us to become more and more sustainable.”

On the 8th of June 2023, the Greenbites team participated in the sustainability competition organised by the Green Office of UvA/HvA.

We are glad to share that we won the Jury Awards for Project Pitching. The most outstanding feature of this win for us is that we had the chance to share our work with the outside world, allow them to interact with our findings and solutions.

We are excited that the larger University community could connect with our project and understand its relevance.

We would appreciate your feedback and you can also connect with us via LinkedIn using the QR-Code below:

We are happy to have participated in this project and the results we have come up with. We are open to further collaborations in other subjects around climate change and sustainability, design thinking, and digital transformation design. Thank you for coming with us on this journey.