Low Carbon Chinatown Digital Cookbook

Explore the various low carbon recipes developed by East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) communities in collaboration with a data scientist and special edition low carbon recipes developed in collaboration with celebrated ESEA chefs and food writers with Low Carbon Chinatown Digital Cookbook. Understand the carbon footprint impact of food through its processes from ingredients, cooking techniques to food sources. Experiment with cooking the dishes at home yourself while assessing the impact of your own cooking on the climate. The Low Carbon Digital Cookbook is a digital companion piece to Low Carbon Chinatown, a project by designer and artist Ling Tan that combines food, data science and community participation to explore different ways that we can all help respond to the Climate Crisis.

Working with East and South East Asian (ESEA) communities around London, Low Carbon Chinatown engaged participants through fundamentally enjoyable activities: cooking and eating. Food, with its association to culture, is something we all have in common, breaking down barriers and bringing us all together. In the project, participants worked with notable ESEA chefs to create low carbon alternatives to typical Chinese dishes, exploring different ingredients, cooking techniques and food sources that, in combination, still retained a core essence of Chinese food culture. By presenting these dishes back to the wider public in a pop-up structure built using low carbon materials and processes, we showed how reimagining both food and design can contribute to a more sustainable future.