The idea

Current data published by newspapers and scientific reports about the human footprint on Earth ecosystems give an alarming perspective to us: we are well away from achieving the goals on global emissions the Paris Climate Conference laid out.

Globalisation sure has brought many benefits in terms of economic development, but its combination with the "Western lifestyle" has also greatly damaged the environment around us. Our lifestyle is unsustainable and to demonstrate it we just need to investigate a simple aspect of everyday life: what we eat.

Cattle breeding accounts for about 18% of total human greenhouse gas emissions and brings deforestation and ultimately desertification with it. Sustainable food is far away from being achieved, nowadays what goes to our dishes is responsible for 26% of the total footprint. By 2050 human population will have risen to more than 9 billion, bringing on the table a huge challenge to resources and especially food request: animal derived products asked to sustain humanity will escalate to a roaring 465 million tonnes. (https://www.scienzainrete.it/articolo/nutrizione-s..., https://www.barillacfn.com/m/infographics/gfn-bari...)

In addition, aspects linking food to globalisation and technology are transportation and packaging: the carbon footprint of bottled water is 28% due to the plastic bottle itself. Not buying local oranges can double their carbon footprint. (http://www.improntawwf.it/carrello/#, based on data by Napoli Federico II University and Tuscia University).

The Project And Impact

The challenge "Warming Planet, Cool Ideas" inspired us to talk about the points discussed before in an interactive way: a Google Assistant tool, to whom it is possible to tell what you've just eaten and immediately being answered with the carbon footprint of your meal. The number you will get will probably leave you unimpressed, but imagine if all humankind had your exact same meal and ate it every day (all of this without considering the other habits you have).

In addition, the app will make you notice that a mainly vegetables and cereals meal has a much lower carbon footprint than a hamburger for example. Eating less meat, making diets "greener", buying mainly local products and minimising waste could reduce food chain related emissions by 16%.

Google Assistant will also be able to give you simple advices (and recipes) that will optimise the carbon footprint of your meal, relying on a database of more than 50 common ingredients.

The processed data can have even more relevance once it is investigated in terms of transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions (TCRE), a linear equation approximating the carbon emissions to temperature rise on the Earth surface. A simple empirical figure is that 1000 petagrams of cumulated carbon emissions correspond to a predicted temperature rise of 0,8 to 2,5 degrees Celsius. (https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/7_knutti.reto.3sed2.pdf)

Team and Development

The project was thought and achieved in two days of hard work, by a team formed of three undergrad students from Politecnico di Milano. All studying different courses at university, our passion and interest for Nasa has nevertheless brought us to choose a challenge not especially related to Space, but very relevant to our everyday life and many activities conducted by Nasa.

Final Conclusions

The conclusions and advices given to make a diet 'sustainable" may sound well-known to many, but a goal of our team's exciting experience was to bring people direct data to evaluate our society's lifestyle and what is wrong with our habits and the products we buy, in a simple and active way.