Here is Hangyi’s blog.

 

For each of the four steps of the natural step framework (awareness and vision, baseline analysis, creative solutions, decide on priorities), describe precisely how you will approach the step for your project.

• Awareness/vision: This portion of the project has already been addressed by previous participants. To summarize, students identified the problem of carbon emissions produced by food production and chose to attack this problem first on the Lehigh campus. Lehigh’s dining halls like Rathbone and Lower Court produce a large amount of food daily and have not taken into consideration the toll the food production has on the environment. We have become more aware of the types of food that have a large carbon footprint and want to decrease the demand for them as quickly as possible by working with the dining hall.
• Baseline Analysis: We recognize that the problem of a large carbon footprint must be addressed, but there are many obstacles. Primarily, working with the dining hall was expected to be complicated. Their first priority is producing and serving food to Lehigh students, not decreasing the environmental impacts. Also, as college students, we must ask if providing information to students will even create an impact and what is the most efficient way of delivering this information. Additionally, another hard problem would be to find out a way to get students to start using our webpage.
• Creative Solutions: A solution has already been agreed upon; this solution is to create a program in which dining hall employees can input the ingredients of food, and the output will give the food a rating. The rating system is green, yellow, and red to indicate the carbon footprint of the food. A sticker with the corresponding color will be placed on the card in front of the food to indicate to students the carbon footprint. We could also attach the idea to make an app or a webpage. A student might have more than one choice of lunch food. Before deciding which one to take, he or she could type all the food they want into the App. The App could operate an algorithm to give the best choice of diet. At the same time, it can not only produce relatively lower carbon emissions but also provide more energy and balancing diet. The app could also make some suggestions or find alternatives for high-carbon-emission food. Many students nowadays are really having difficulty deciding what to take for lunch because there are so many options. That’s another reason we think the App would be popular. The App can also be developed to save the search records and leverage the collected data to upgrade. The app would also have accompanied knowledge on environmental carbon emission or effect on Calorie to encourage students to make changes. There would also be some fun facts to attract students’ interests.

 

• Decide on Priorities: Our current priority is to be in communication with the dining hall. We need to produce a schedule, so we can start a soft launch. If we start to spread awareness about the project and then the project falls through because the dining hall was not clear about their timeline, the project will be forgotten about and have a smaller impact. So, we must collaborate with the dining hall to decide a firm timeline for the launch. At the same time, we are also building the website and doing many preparations for the launch of the project.

 

Identify the three most important metrics of success for each of the three pillars of sustainability (environmental stewardship, social equity, and economic prosperity) for your project?

• Environmental Stewardship: 

1. An important metric of success for our project is decreased demand for high carbon footprint food in Lehigh dining halls.
2. Hopefully, this will lead to a decreased supply of these high carbon footprint foods.
3. After the supply of these foods has decreased, Lehigh dining halls will have decreased their production of food waste and greenhouse gas emissions from food production.

• Social equity:

1. By bringing awareness to food with high carbon footprints, students will be more likely to choose low carbon footprint foods, which are typically more whole foods. This gives every student an equal opportunity to choose more health conscientious foods.
2. Decreasing Lehigh’s carbon footprint, in general, contributes to decreased greenhouse gas emissions, which have universal environmental benefits even if it is on a small scale.
3. If we finally set up a model and achieve our goal successfully, it can be easily used by other colleges and universities, which would then make a huge impact, and more people can be beneficial.
4. This project will be successful based on the employees of Lehigh dining halls and if they collaborate and contribute to aiding the progress of the project.

• Economic Prosperity:

1. More of Lehigh’s food production budget could be tunneled into low carbon footprint foods and providing more whole foods.
2. Students may be more likely to take what food they know they need, which would decrease food waste outside of the dining halls.
3. The dining halls will produce a more sustainable amount of food to decrease food waste in dining halls. 
4. The dining halls can finally save money by producing food that contains less carbon emission because these kinds of food usually cost less than the food that contains more Calories or carbon emissions.
5. Our App might end up getting profit with more users.

 

Review various strategies for moving towards a circular economy (https://www.ceguide.org/Strategies-and-examples). As a team, review these different strategies (except the ones under finance) and identify five strategies that are relevant to your project. For each strategy, briefly explain how you might apply that strategy.

1. Digitization and virtualization: Lehigh’s dining halls have an online menu that can also include rankings of the food with a dot with the corresponding color or highlighting the menu item. The food carbon footprint is intangible in reality, but we are going to visualize it by collecting data on carbon emissions and making tangible diets for students to reduce environmental pollution.
2. Design for maintainability: This would apply to the program we plan to create. We plan to make it as user friendly as possible so current and future dining hall employees can use it with ease. 
3. Cradle to Cradle: In this project, our mission is not limited to decreasing carbon emission; we are also going to make students’ living healthy by having a diet containing fewer calories and is more qualified. Also, we are trying to make this idea be used by other colleges.
4. Regenerative design: The ultimate goal of our project is to make this a national, open-source model for other colleges/universities to use. So we are trying to make the idea and implementation to be easily repeated. 
5. Six Sigma: We can use the “Six Sigma” strategy to help us make fewer mistakes, and then less waste will be generated.