Game ON! a Gamified Approach to Household Food Waste Reduction

Food waste is an issue of high relevance to all countries around the globe. Many entities and governments work towards finding a solution to decrease or minimise the waste from its production to food consumption. Due to this impact, reducing food waste has also been implemented as a sub-goal of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Several awareness campaigns have been developed to educate the population to be more mindful and responsible, most of these initiatives are focused on a general audience providing information about economic benefits for the customer and the well-being of the environment. In collaboration with the local Food Bank, we have identified that food waste reduction should be approached early on and that food waste awareness should not be introduced to children the same way as to adults. So new approaches should be developed to engage younger audiences with food waste reduction. Based on the potential that games have to engage children, this work proposes the design of a game targeting children ages eight to twelve years old to raise awareness about some of the best practices for food waste reduction in household consumers.