My talk about sustainability in food shopping to SIRACH Network Innovation in Heating and Cooling Seminar, Wed 22nd Oct 2014, i.e. about what drives the need for heating and refrigeration in the first place and why might we want to influence this to reduce our carbon footprint. Starting with the proposition that food is a surprisingly high part of the UK domestic carbon footprint, the talk first showed a fine-grained analysis of typical student diet with measured direct energy impact and estimates of its embodied carbon footprint: to illustrate how the foods chosen are the most significant contributor to diets' carbon footprint, and how typical diets might be limited and repetitive. Second, we reported on how mainstream food increasingly relies on convenience foods and how these foods, and societal conventions (e.g. what is a 'proper' meal anyway) encourage and limit what we repeatedly eat. We then talked about our sustainably minded participants, what they care about, how they evaluate what they eat, and how they develop new capabilities and knowledge for acquiring and preparing sustainable food. We finished by looking at why these choices are complex and why I believe it's important we (and specifically supermarkets) help making these choices more transparent to the consumer and in the supply chain to help promote a more sustainable diet, and why we must act now! Published work relating to this talk: A. Clear, M. Hazas, J. Morley, A. Friday, and O. Bates, “Domestic food and sustainable design: A study of university student cooking and its impacts,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2447–2456, 2013. http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sds/files/2013/05/clear_hobcam_20131.pdf More about our work: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sds

1. UNDERSTANDING
SUSTAINABLE FOOD
SHOPPING: SUSTAINABLY
MINDED SHOPPERS AND
THE SUPERMARKET
Adrian Friday, Mike Hazas,
Adrian Clear, Kirstie O’Neil, Janine
Morley and Oliver Bates
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sds/

2. OVERVIEW
1. Why should we care about sustainable food?
2. Quantification of food impacts from a student population
3. The status quo: food in a more general population
4. Learning from sustainably minded shoppers “walking the
walk”
5. Some implications and points for discussion

3. The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane,
and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at
least the last 800,000 years (IPCC, AR5)
Image: IPCC

4. Household fuel
13%
Household
Vehicle fuel
10%
Household
electricity
9%
Personal air
travel
8%
Other Personal
transport
3%
Cars
5%
Food and
drink (from
shops)
education and
health and social
Hotels, pubs 12%
and catering
4%
Defence,
services
11%
Paper and
printing
1%
Textiles and
clothes
2%
Electronic /
computers /
appliances
4%
Construction
6%
Water and
Sewage
2%
Other
10%
15 TONNES CO2E
Food for the “typical UK person” is around 12-16% of the
personal footprint

5. IS FOOD A BIG DEAL?
• GHG footprint of UK food = 160 Mt CO2e
(HM Gov: Food 2030)
• That’s 2.7t CO2e per person per year, or 27% of total direct
GHG emissions of the UK
• Change to vegetarian/vegan diet could save 40 Mt CO2e/ year
(equivalent to a 50% reduction in current exhaust pipe
emissions from the entire UK passenger car fleet)
The relative greenhouse gas impacts of realistic dietary choices. Energy Policy, Vol. 43, 2012, p. 184-190.

6. Image removed for copyright reasons
(depicting overweight child choosing between
a bowl of fruit and some cream cakes)
In the UK, 67% of men and 57% of women and over quarter of
children are either overweight or obese
The Lancet, 384(9945), pp. 766-781, August 2014

7. 1. IMPACT OF DIET
What is cooked, and what impact does it have?
n=22, real-time energy, motion captured images, interviews

8. TIME LAPSE VIDEO OF TYPICAL STUDENT FOOD
BEING PREPARED (LOTS OF SAUSAGES AND PASTA)

9. COOKING SESSION
ANNOTATION
One cook, single portion

10. COOKING SESSION
ANNOTATION
Components used
Back-r ight
Back-left

11. COOKING SESSION
ANNOTATION
Foods observed
... and quantities
Pasta
(100g)
Jar red sauce
(160g)

12. COOKING SESSION
ANNOTATION
Cooking method
Use of lid?
Boiling
(no lid)
Heating
(no lid)

13. COOKING SESSION
ANNOTATION
Changes in control
position

14. GHG emissions per £ of product at the checkout
0.000 0.500 1.000 1.500 2.000 2.500 3.000 3.500
(2) BEER AND CIDER
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Onions, root crops, cabbages,
herbs&spcices, other veg,
Green salads
Prepared Veg., fruit & salad
Exotic veg and mushrooms
Apples & Pears
Bananas
Citrus and melons
Exotic fruit and berries
(including soft, stone, grapes)
(67) FLORISTRY
(84) CABINETS COOKED MEATS
Cabinets Milk
Ready meals, pizza & pasta
Sandwiches
(52) BREAD
(70) FROZEN FOODS
kgCO2e
Source ingredients to
farm / factory gate
Food processing
Total consumer
packaging footprint
Transit packaging
Transport Emissions to
DC
Transport emissions
from all DCs to Stores
Storage and
processing at DC
Overhead (exc.
refrigeration)
Refrigeration
WHERE IS THE CO2?
Source: Mike Berners-Lee, Small World Consulting

15. COOKING: QUANTIFIED

16. RELATIVE IMPACTS
Other food
Cooking Energy Emissions (22%)
Waste
Other
devices
Indirect Emissions (78%)

17. DIET
High Impact
Low Impact
Pasta
sauce

18. A CONVENIENT DIET
“typical student
food”
“all those kind of
really easy things”
90
80
e)
2
80
70
60
60
50
40
40
30
20
20
10
0
jarred chicken
sauce
pasta
vegetables
sausages
chips
pizza
bread
baked beans
rice
potatoes
tortellini
bacon
frozen veg.
tinned egg
noodles
tomatoes
mince beef
steak
readymeal
fish
soup
61
70
87
88
41
43
21
9217
33
8
15
40
22
8 29
27
10
9
8 10
7
e)
2
Embodied Ghg emissions (kg CO
0
jarred chicken
pasta
sauce
chips
pizza
bread
baked beans
rice
potatoes
tortellini
bacon
frozen tinned veg.
egg
noodles
mince steak
beef
fish
61
69
66
41
43
20
8817
32
8
15
41
21
8 29
27
10
9
8 10
Embodied GhG emissions (kg CO
• Repeated moderate- to high-impact foods

19. “WHATEVER’S IN THE
CUPBOARD”
“I like vegetables and
salads and stuff like that
but when I buy it it just all
goes off...”
“um, risottos, stuff, pasta and
sauce whatever, um
shepherds pie ...whatever
ingredients we have”

20. •Food often takes a back seat to other activities
(working, studying, socialising)
•Limited technique and cooking skills in play
(diminishing in UK - Short, 2003)
•But at a point of transition in their lives when they
could be acquire new skills (Meah & Watson, 2011)
Short, F., “Domestic cooking practices and cooking skills: findings from an english study,” Food Service Technology, vol. 3, no. 3-4, pp. 177–185, 2003.
Meah, A., Watson, M. (2011) Saints and slackers: challenging discourses about the decline of domestic cooking, Sociological Research Online, 16 (2), 6.

21. 2. MAINSTREAM PRACTICES
Surely, this is just students, right?
n=24, recruited face to face in regional supermarkets

22. IN “REAL LIFE”
• children’s preferences or diets and dietary restrictions, family
circumstances, as well as cost (offers), or storage, and logistics
• concerns, choices and dichotomies such as processed /
unprocessed, local / imported, healthy / unhealthy, balanced /
unbalanced, practical / impractical and so on
•With few exceptions, we noticed little direct interest or
concern with ‘carbon footprint’, link to food not recognised

23. CHICKEN WITH CHEESE
George reflected that,
“things have moved on a
long way since my mother
was alive and she made
all things fresh”
“buy a couple of chickens for
£5-6, chickens with cheese
on… and you can buy other
ready stuff like sautéed
potatoes…”

24. READY MEAL EMANCIPATION
• “…we don’t see the point of my wife being in the kitchen an
hour and half tied to the stove and preparing things…"

25. PROPER FOOD
• “Proper food, what it used to
be like. None of this, how can
I put it, these ready meals.”
• “It’s how you’ve been
brought up, I’ve been brought
up on meat and potato pies,
and shepherds pie.”
Image removed for
copyright reasons
(depicting roast beef
traditional Sunday roast)

26. FINDING THE TIME
“not a huge variety because we never seem to have the
time to … look at different recipes… it’s an aspiration to
spend a bit more time on food. But yes, life tends to be
pretty full with various things…"

27. LOCAL AND SEASONAL
• Tomatoes and meat were mentioned
frequently as having to be as local as
possible:
• “I would be more aware of it. I think at
other supermarkets there’s...there’s less
advertising of the fact that these apples
are British or this is produced in [UK
county].” (Bonnie)

28. TRUST
Image removed for copyright reasons
(depicting a trusting child leaping into his father’s arms)
Catherine felt: “you’ve got to be careful
there that you’ve got the English meat
because the dish being made in England
and the meat being produced in England is
two different things. Sneaky!”

29. VEGETARIAN
INCONVENIENCE
Bonnie felt that vegetarians were not well
catered for: she does not “buy many ready meals
because the quality and the standard and the
portion size, there’s very little available I would say
for vegetarians that is really worth buying”.

30. LIFE TRANSITIONS
• Carol had recently lost her husband. Immediately following his
death she turned to ready meals, as she could not face
cooking, whereas now she described a significant shift in what
she bought, cooked and ate:
• “I don’t cook as often as I did. And we eat a lot more salads and
a lot of fresh vegetables. Well we ate fresh vegetables before but
they had to be cooked because it wasn’t a real meal if it hadn’t
been cooked!”
• Loss of skills, living on one’s own (predicted 41% by 2033†)
†Household Projections, 2008 to 2013, England

31. 3. SUSTAINABLY MINDED
What does food mean and what can we learn from it?
3 focus groups, n=20+

32. WHEN I SAY SUSTAINABLE…
• All ethically guided, but their
interpretations of, and
commitment to sustainability
differed:
• animal welfare, organicity,
localness, food miles,
seasonality, social injustice,
and affordability.
Image removed for copyright reasons
(depicting free range hens in a grassy field)
Image: http://www.globalanimalpartnership.org/

33. ACQUIRING FOOD
• Almost all of them regularly shopped or acquired food from
places other than supermarkets
• Their everyday shopping practices scarcely consisted of
making decisions to buy this or that, rather where they
shopped (trust)
•When supermarkets were used, for reasons of convenience,
cost, or poor availability of alternatives, care was taken based
on its environmental policy

34. AN ON-GOING PROJECT
Image removed for copyright reasons
(depicting a tasty looking vegan mushroom curry)
Acquiring the skills to produce tasty and sustainable meals takes
time, effort and engagement…
“and I suppose all of us are describing, do a little change and
embedding it, do a little change and embedding it, and it’s growing and
growing…”

35. CLOSER TO THE EARTH
A number of participants’ experiences of growing food provided a
reference point for notions of, for example, naturalness, freshness,
seasonality, and taste, from which they could critically evaluate
supermarket produce.
“the expiry date of fruits and vegetables in the supermarket I find very
surprising… with the carrots, the expiry date is within two weeks… my
family always had a farm you can store them all Winter… what sort of
carrots am I buying if it goes off within two weeks?!” (Joyce)

36. PROVENANCE & VALUE
Image removed for copyright reasons
(depicting wild blackberries emphasising hand picked food)
“we’ve planted fruit trees, I’ve got potatoes now, I’ve got courgettes...it’s
really important to me and I think some of that is the fact that I’m
vegetarian and actually when you’ve grown it and there’s that whole
time thing and it costs a lot more to have one of my courgettes but at
least I know I’ve grown it and I know what’s gone onto it and actually
when you come to eat it not only does it taste really good but...it’s just
kind of a nice cycle I think” (Liz)

37. DISCUSSION

38. HOW DOES CONSUMPTION
COME ABOUT?
"[R]elevant patterns of consumption follow from efforts
to provide and sustain what people take to be normal
services like those of comfort and cleanliness"
Elizabeth Shove, Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience, p. 198

39. SUSTAINABLE CHOICE IS
(TOO?) COMPLEX
• Seasonality in the country of origin
• Hot housing (e.g. tomatoes)
• Reduced GHG, e.g. methane from ruminating animals
• Transport and refrigeration (air, ship, land)
• Locavorism
• and other issues: competing land use, biodiversity, fairtrade

40. LESS INSULATION, MORE
TRANSPARENCY?
Asparagus (250g pack): 2kg
Low
125 g
Air
freighted
from Peru
Average
2 kg
Local In-season
High
3.5 kg

41. 80
60
40
20
2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100
80
60
40
2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100
ACTING NOW
80
60
40
20
2000 2020 2040 2060 2080 2100
(Anderson & Bows. 2008 Philosophical Transactions A of the
Royal Society. 366. pp. 3863-3882)
Year
Emissions of greenhouse gases (GtCO2e)
0
2015 peak
Year
Emissions of greenhouse gases (GtCO2e) 0
20
2020 peak
Year
Emissions of greenhouse gases (GtCO2e)
0
2025 peak

42. DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY
• Technologies can make recommendations, support choice and
reflection on food consumed (caveat: information deficit,
especially on supply chains, LCA and product composition)
• But, supermarkets are implicated reproducing food norms
(defaults, incentives) - is it corporate social responsibility? can
sustainability be good business? Exploit transitions in industry?
•What is a sustainable diet? It is inherently more varied and
responsive to what’s available, so can we insulate less from this
variation and save energy on transport and refrigeration?

43. QUESTIONS?
• Also happy to talk about:
• Energy use and ICT in the
home
• Alternative (domestic) heating
control based on adaptive
thermal comfort
Contact:
a.friday@lancaster.ac.uk
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sds
• Want more? See:
• A. Clear, M. Hazas, J. Morley, A. Friday, and
O. Bates, “Domestic food and sustainable
design: A study of university student
cooking and its impacts,” in Proceedings
of the SIGCHI Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2447–
2456, 2013.
This work was part funded by the UK Research Councils (EPSRC grants EP/
G008523/1, EP/I00033X/1 and EP/K012738/1), and the Facilities Division and
Faculty of Science and Technology at Lancaster University.