“We want to make food sustainability fun”

It’s probably fair to say that most of us would be happy to eat good, nutritious food produced in a sustainable way. However, it’s not always easy to know how sustainable or how nutritious our food is, especially when we don’t cook it ourselves.

Now, an EPFL initiative that originated as a semester project in the Data Science Laboratory (Dlab), part of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC), and now supported by the Integrative Food and Nutrition Center and the EPFL student association Zero Emission Group, is aiming to change that.

EcoLens is a new mobile app that utilizes a game-like interface encouraging users to make more eco-conscious choices at university restaurants. Starting next Monday the team behind EcoLens is running a two-week pilot program during which EPFL staff and students will be able to download the app, discover what is on the menu at restaurants on the Lausanne campus, track their meals and participate in quizzes and challenges around sustainable food choices to earn rewards.

“We wanted to add a gamification component to make food sustainability fun,” explained Andrea Perozziello, EPFL Master alumnus in Computer Science and the founder of EcoLens. “We’ve taken inspiration from the Bike to Work Challenge that gamifies commuting, encouraging more sustainable transport,” he continued.

Using EcoLens, participants can connect with sustainability where they eat their food, logging what they consume and mapping it in a simple way that earns them more points the more sustainable their choices are. Participants receive 2 points per meal they log, 1 bonus point for a fully plant-based meal and half a bonus point for a vegetarian meal.

Users are also able to earn points if they complete a daily quiz with five questions focused on topics around nutrition, seasonality, locality and sustainability. An app leaderboard ranks users, and the EcoLens team is hoping to expand this feature so that EPFL schools, or indeed, eventually, different universities throughout Switzerland or Europe can compete on food sustainability.

“At the end of the two week pilot, based on the leaderboard we will reward users with products or voucher discounts that have been donated by our partners and we will analyze how people have been using the application, participating in the daily quizzes – what has worked, what hasn’t worked – so that we can improve how it functions,” said Julia Ravagnani, EPFL Master’s student at EPFL in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, also part of the EcoLens team.

The EcoLens team is also in close contact with EPFL’s Catering and Shops Unit (RESCO). The results of the pilot will be shared with RESCO to explore implementation and collaboration opportunities moving forward.

In addition, EcoLens is working on a second pilot project at ETH Zurich and is also in discussions with a Europe-wide movement called Plant Based Universities to expand the Swiss pilot programs to a larger roll-out at up to ten universities across Europe in September.

“Today, there are so many people that want to make a difference when they consume food and there are so many people who want to make a difference when they produce food but there’s often no direct link between the two in our consumerist society. With EcoLens we are trying to develop a useful umbrella tool to create a link between committed consumers and food producers and a kind of social sphere where to play this type of game is not only cool but makes a difference,” concluded Perozziello.

If you want to take part in the pilot program, you can download the EcoLens application on the Apple and Google App stores. Participants register with any email address they choose and utilize any username they wish, with data used according to the EcoLens Privacy Policy.