Bon Appétit Management Company’s Facebook Quiz Serves up A Byte-Sized Low Carbon Diet Challenge
Social Media quiz joins Low Carbon Diet Calculator to Help Users Lower their Food Carbon Footprint
Palo Alto, Calif. Mar
24, 2009 — Food’s impact on
climate change is becoming an increasingly prominent social and environmental issue
requiring changes in America’s eating habits. Facebook, a social media platform with around 175
million active users, provides a powerful way to engage with a variety of
audiences, and inspire them to action. Companies have been searching for the
most effective way to capitalize on Facebook’s large audience of engaged,
active members in various ways—from placing advertising on the Facebook interface
to creating applications that allow users to give their products as virtual
gifts. For Bon Appétit Management Company, with hundreds of cafés on over 80
college and university campuses and an equal number of corporate headquarters,
the goal is to inform both its audiences of the carbon impact of their food
choices.
Instead of
creating a page focused on the company itself, Bon Appétit chose to broadcast
this message in a fun, friendly, and non-judgmental vehicle that would get
people talking and sharing. Because
users can challenge their friends to take the quiz it inspires a little
friendly competition ahead of the company’s annual Low Carbon Diet Day on Earth
Day. Data from customer focus groups echoed the advice from Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg, “Communities already exist. Instead, think about how you can
help that community do what it wants to do.” By distributing the quiz to
existing networks of alumni groups, Class of XX pages, affinity groups, and
school pages, rather than creating a remote page, the company is capturing the
attention of quiz takers where they are already gathering.
The quiz
application launched last week and gets to the heart of everyday meal
choices, posing questions like, “which
part of your pepperoni pizza contributes the most to climate change?” Each
answer is followed by an explanation to help quiz takers learn why some foods
are higher carbon than others. As for that pizza, the answer is cheese because
it comes from ruminant animals that emit methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times
more powerful than carbon dioxide. The Low Carbon Diet Facebook quiz is an
innovative, dynamic way to illuminate the environmental costs of our food,
inspire eaters to make better choices, and harness the viral power of social
networking.
Americans can indeed
reduce their contribution to global warming, with surprisingly bite-sized steps
all adding up to significant impact. Yet, in this age of eco-overload, food’s contribution to global warming can seem
like a daunting concept to tackle with every breakfast, lunch and dinner. This entertaining
and instructive quiz and its online companion, The Low Carbon Diet Calculator
(www.eatlowcarbon.org), which
tallies the carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions of favorite
foods, encourage action by showing how small
choices made by ordinary citizens can make an enormous difference.
With forty-nine percent of all meals
eaten in the U.S. – or about a half-billion meals each day – produced in
commercial kitchens, it’s crucial to tackle the problem of food’s role in climate
change on the supply side as well as the demand side. In addition to its
consumer-facing social media programs, Bon Appetit Management Company has
pledged to lower the carbon footprint of the highest impact areas of its
operations by 25% over three years. By April 2009, these specific results will
be achieved:
· Cheese
purchases reduced by 10%
· Beef
purchases reduced by 25%
· And
over just 10 weeks, food waste reduced by 20%
Full
list of commitments here: http://www.circleofresponsibility.com/page/322/bon-apptits-commitment.htm
About
Bon Appétit Management Company
Bon Appétit Management Co. is an onsite restaurant company offering full food service management to corporations, universities and specialty venues. Bon Appétit is committed to sourcing sustainable, local foods for all cafés throughout the country. A pioneer in environmentally sound sourcing policies, Bon Appétit has developed programs addressing local purchasing, the overuse of antibiotics, sustainable seafood, cage-free eggs, and most recently, the connection between food and climate change. The company has received numerous awards for its work from organizations like Seafood Choices Alliance, The Humane Society of the
