Sustainability Abstraction in the Twin Transition: A Human-Centered Perspective on Professional Kitchens

While the “twin transition” promises environmental optimization, it might overlook frontline employees’ potential detachment from the material realities of their work. This paper introduces sustainability abstraction, the translation of embodied sustainability practices into digital representations. Focusing on food waste management in professional kitchens, we integrate Marx, Braverman, and Rosa to develop the Resonance–Alienation framework. The framework explains how sustainability abstraction drives employee alienation and sustainability deskilling, proposing four resonance pathways to preserve craftsmanship, sensory judgment and agency. The paper concludes by calling for empirical testing to validate the extent to which kitchen staff experience this abstraction and alienation.