Data-driven sustainable food: The case of One Planet Plate

About the project

Objective
WWF Sweden’s One Planet Plate (OPP) offers chefs, caterers and consumers a practical guide to climate- and biodiversity-aligned meals, underpinned by a “cradle-to-plate” database and a 0.5 kg CO₂e/meal threshold. Despite early uptake by more than twenty restaurants and public institutions, OPP faces challenges, such as data and methodological inconsistencies, trust issues and scale-up barriers.

Addressing these challenges, our project aims to shed light on the following research questions:

1. How and under which conditions can the OPP software diffuse and drive transitions toward economically and environmentally sustainable business models of restaurants? 
2. How can the methodological foundations and user-facing functionalities of the OPP tool be critically evaluated and improved, e.g., through uncertainty communication or AI integration, to better support climate- and biodiversity-aligned food practices? 
3. How and under which conditions can stakeholder engagement and cooperation foster mutual learning and inform the future direction of data-driven sustainability tools in food services?

Background
As datafication and artificial intelligence reshape decision-making, including in food services,One Planet (OPP) initiative offers an early real-world testbed. In our project, we will providean in-depth study of OPP – one of frontrunners among data-driven sustainable food initiatives worldwide – advancing understanding of the potential of digital tools to foster climate- and biodiversity-aligned consumption.

We apply a transdisciplinary lens – exploring methodological robustness, user experience, scalability and business feasibility – through close collaboration between researchers, tool developers, data providers, chefs and other users.

Crossdisciplinary collaboration
The researchers in the team represent the Department of Industrial Economic and Management (INDEK) at ITM/KTH and the Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED) at ABE/KTH as well as KTH Food Centre.