Food Sharing Calculator
The Food Sharing Calculator is an online decision-support tool to assess the costs, benefits and impacts of food sharing. It is designed for food sharing initiatives (FSIs), food sharing investors from public, private and philanthropy sectors and citizens to identify costs and benefits, measure impact and guide investment to build resilient food futures. It is one of the tools developed in the CULTIVATE project (https://cultivate-project.eu/), which constitute the Food Sharing Compass
The Food Sharing Calculator has been co-created with CULTIVATE partners and collaborators including FSIs, municipalities, researchers, communication and knowledge brokerage actors. The Food Sharing Calculator differentiates among three core food sharing actitities: growing food together, cooking and eating together, and re-distributing surplus food, recognising that many FSIs undertake more than one of these activities.
The Food Sharing Calculator includes three focus areas:
- Estimating costs of food sharing activities
- Understanding benefits of food sharing activities
- Assessing impacts of food sharing activities
The food sharing costs include financial spendings as well as time, efforts and other material and non-material inputs to start, operate and maintain a food sharing activity.
The food sharing benefits are positive social, environmental, economic or other outcomes from food sharing activities, often presented in qualitative terms.
The food sharing impacts are actual sustainability impacts from food sharing activities, which are tailored to a particular FSI, can be either positive or negative, and are often presented in quantitative terms.
Do you want to learn more about costs and benefits of food sharing in European cities? Read the CULTIVATE reports.
Do you want to assess sustainability impacts of your FSI? Visit the CULTIVATE Sharing Solutions Toolshed
Do you want to see examples of sustainability impact assessments by other FSIs? Visit the CULTIVATE Sharing Solutions Talent Garden
