This research assessed the carbon footprint of foods sold within Leeds City Markets and worked to understand the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours around the sustainability of food held by traders within the market.
This helped the team to understand the role market space plays in beliefs around sustainability and what the perceived and actual barriers are for decreasing the carbon footprint size of the foods sold in Leeds markets.
This research had two components:
- Qualitative data collection, in the form of surveys and interviews.
- Quantitative data collection, in the form of stock/procurement lists.
Through interviews and surveys, the research assessed how Leeds City Markets’ traders feel about sustainability and what they perceive are the barriers to achieving net zero or decreasing their carbon footprint size.
The research also explored cultural differences in purchase habits and provision of foods by speaking to traders who sell foods of diverse ethnic origins, to understand the potential implications of selecting lower carbon footprint foods for different cultural groups.
With a focus on the top 10 items sold by each tradesperson, we analysed the carbon footprint of those items using the Consumer Data Research Centre’s carbon footprint calculator. The aims were to:
- raise awareness of the footprint size of everyday items
- identify if swaps to more sustainable options
- assess whether stock lists could be limited to the most popular items to minimise carbon footprint where substitutions would not be possible economically or culturally.
This project was funded by the 2023–2024 Research England Policy Support Fund and responds to Leeds City Council’s 2023 Area of Research Interest (Word document download) ‘Food’, specifically ‘Carbon footprint of food’.
Resources
Contacts
Others involved
- Emily Ennis
- Polly Cook
- Steven Mason (Leeds City Council)