Transcriber: Krystian Aparta Reviewer: Denise RQ
Did you know that one third of greenhouse gas emissions
originate from our food consumption?
Everyone can cook,
but do you know how much these carrots contribute to it?
I wonder how can we, as individuals, make smart decisions,
considering the urgency of climate-change when it comes to our foods.
It is not standard human behavior, to take complex facts into account.
But I believe there is a way and I now tell you how.
6 years ago I came to Switzerland to study neuroinformatics,
to understand better the human brain.
As a kid, I loved sitting in front of the computer.
I connected with the ideas of breaking systems apart,
solving problems and creating artificial life.
There was a vote, when I finished school,
everyone at my age participated:
“Who is going to be the person who will not cope with reality?”
I scored first place, I took 70% of all votes.
(Laughter)
And you know what?
They were right, I do not get along with it. I want change.
One big reason of who I am are my parents.
I was their first child when they were 21 years old.
They were open-minded and spirited.
Thinking about my childhood, it feels like I get this deep understanding
of what connects us and why we are here:
Being dependent on someone to give you food and love,
to be free to learn,
to be inspired, to discover and to be surprised,
free to let anyone in,
the only currency is a kiss.
We were all children,
--and sometimes I get struck by the belief that we are all a big family --
in fact, 7 billion strong.
And we are all grown up now and bound by the constraints of nature,
here we strive to share our choices with the future generations to come.
Climate change is a reality and global resources are getting sparse.
What is your individual role that you are playing here?
What if you like carrots?
How are they going to impact people and the planet?
So there it happened.
I came along this study and I got stuck, I could not let go of it, up to this day.
31% of greenhouse gas emissions originate from our food consumption.
We can reduce them by half
by eating meals that are affordable, healthy, delicious,
and where we also make smart decisions on reducing the environmental footprint.
And it is not just about CO2.
This food it is special,
by scaling down on emissions
we equally scale down on oil consumption,
on air-pollution, on land and water.
And everyone agrees, that we only have one planet for humanity to thrive.
Food can be broken down into its ingredients
and each ingredient tells its own complex story.
In order to make relevant decisions we have to look
at all the different points where it emits CO2.
Sum them up and look at them.
So take a look at a tomato grown anywhere in season.
It just has a fraction of the CO2 footprint,
as the tomato that is grown in a greenhouse.
Now compare this to the asparagus, that is flown in by airplane.
Look how much CO2 this is.
And it doesn’t even matter where the asparagus comes from,
when it is brought in by ship or grown locally in the first place.
Compare this to any food made out of animal proteins
and you will immediately see what matters.
The difference between beef and chicken,
due the amount of methane that is produced in the cow’s stomach
while breaking down the grass.
And cheese also has a high CO2 impact because it is made out of cow’s milk.
So, there is an easy, take home message here.
First, start loving to eat greens,
and third and second, eat seasonal and local,
because then you don’t have a greenhouse or an airplane.
My partner Judith and 3 other fellow students,
we discussed what we are going to do about this.
And we agreed, that we want to look at the CO2-impact of meals,
to be able to inform people on a level that is comprehensive.
So It is easy for you to lean back in your favorite restaurant and just pick
the meal that has been awarded being climate-friendly.
And we also agreed that we must feel responsible to make it happen.
So we decided to go to our university,
and have them label the meals to make it real,
to communicate the value of our discovery.
We were students full of ambitions.
We called ourselves Eternity.
And we thought everyone can cook
and we are going start a movement for climate-friendly meals.
We went to our university and they turned us down.
They said: "If something is going to happen at our university
it has to be rock solid science."
And they requested to have a professor involved.
We worked hard and we contacted a lot
-- they were all busy writing publications --
but finally we could find someone who was happy to support us.
The deal was that we had to collect
all available scientific data on each ingredient.
And there are a lot.
There is a method, it is called life-cycle-assessment.
You break down the production of food into its processes.
You look what materials go into the process,
what goes out and what happens with them.
This is a careful and precise and time-consuming analysis.
In the end, you come up with a number that indicates the carbon footprint,
and now you are able to make measurable decisions
about what is good for our climate.
And that’s what we did.
We basically assembled the most valuable and complete database
to make CO2 calculations for meals.
We went back to the university, and they said:
" Okay, you can make a pilot, three weeks in one restaurant,
to see if this is actually something that interests people.
Then we went to the restaurant manager,
and she turned us down.
She said she didn’t see the purpose,
how would she make money with something like that?
So, we recruited a bunch of more students.
We sat down and created marketing materials,
fliers, posters, an information booth
and we walked around on the campus informing everybody
until the restaurant manager just couldn’t resist to notice
that this is actually something her guests want.
You should have seen the look on the cook’s face when we approached him,
and told him what we were going to do:
reduce CO2, fight climate change, and by the way, save the planet.
What kind of funny hippies are those students,
he must have been thinking.
We talked we him, over and over again, until he made the idea his own.
Until he could see himself being the hero who will share the smile with the guests.
And together we created the most wonderful climate friendly meals.
This one, was the most popular one
the good old spaghetti pesto with grilled vegetables.
And out of 10.000 served meals, 2500 persons chose our climate friendly.
The pilot was a huge success.
The media came in, uninvited into to the restaurant
and they reported about it on the newspapers and on television.
And then there was this very decisive moment:
Kofi Annan came to visit our university.
He was giving a speech urging for the role of science in climate-change.
And we took the opportunity and talked with him,
told him what we are doing.
And he looked at us and said
that this is not just something for the university,
this is something for the whole of humanity.
And we should go about it, and he trusts in us,
and that we should continue to roll out and we will be successful.
This moment was one of our greatest gratifications.
Years of hard work had let up to this point.
It gave us this great boost of energy,
and the confidence to step out of university and think big.
We started programming a software
to be able to share CO2 calculations at scale.
We have just recently launched our beta test
and more than 100 persons and restaurants have signed up,
and it is great for us to discover
how they find inspiration and creativity in creating climate-friendly recipes.
And this is what is happening exactly right now.
Together with a partner, we are going to roll out
daily climate-friendly meals in several hundreds of restaurants.
With their cooks being the climate heroes,
they will lead the beginning of sustainable cuisine.
And with them, we are going to set a standard,
so that many more will follow.
There a quarter of a million restaurants in the next market and that's our target.
We will continue to roll out.
Now let’s take a step back.
It is not easy to live on one ton of CO2 in our society.
It is not driven by standard human behavior.
It is complex, we need to break it down into little steps
so each of us is able to commit.
But with food I cannot help to think.
It is so simple and yet so delicious.
Everyone can cook.
When my grandmother cooks for me, I just cannot say no.
I mean even she's cooking climate-friendly for the whole family.
So if we would choose to eat climate-friendly three times a week,
we could save one billion tons of CO2.
There is nothing alike that effective.
There is no technical miracle that could do so much with so little.
So my wish is
that you will cook climate-friendly for the ones you love.
Because this is it where it all begins and each of us can join.
[Cook smart for the ones you love.]
And together, we will add to this great picture,
a picture that is part of the future we want to live in.
Thank you.
(Applause)