Grüt - A Gardening Sensor Kit for Children. A digital application that helps children develop ownership for their plants

One of the main problems in modern society is food waste. The main cause of it is the attitude of the consumers, which influence enormously the whole food chain, from production to consumption. Most of buyers see food as a commodity and, especially children, don’t have any idea where it comes from. One way to reduce the problem seems to be changing consumers’ attitude, which develops during the early years of childhood. Research has shown a change in children’s food-related behavior after attending school garden classes. Often the experience of growing crops can’t be done in the domestic space, thus causing a loss of the positive effects in the long term. This paper presents a project that tries to teach children how to grow their own food indoor and outdoor, mixing real and virtual reality, connecting something natural as a plant to the Internet of Things (network of physical objects virtually connected to each other and to the web). The use of sensors related to an app makes it more fun and educational. The aim of the project is to change children’s attitude towards food, increasing their knowledge about production and consumption in order to reduce waste in the future. The research has been in collaboration with Cisco NL and MediaLAB Amsterdam. The user testing has been executed in Amsterdam, with Dutch children.