Food & Dining
Introduction
Modern industrial food production often has deleterious environmental and social impacts. Institutions can use their food purchases to support their local economies; encourage safe, environmentally friendly and humane farming methods; and help eliminate unsafe working conditions and alleviate poverty for farmers. These actions help reduce environmental impacts, preserve regional farmland, improve local food security, and support fair and resilient food systems. Dining services can also support sustainable food systems by preventing food waste and diverting food materials from the waste stream, by making low impact dining options available, and by educating its customers about more sustainable options and practices.
Featured Resources
New Resources
This tab provides access to data collected through AASHE’s Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS). STARS is a transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance. STARS enables meaningful comparisons over time and across institutions using a common set of measurements developed with broad participation from the campus sustainability community. Additional content and advanced benchmarking tools will be added to this tab over time.
Benchmarking Data
The following links connect to specific Content Displays on the STARS website (AASHE membership and log-in required).
- Percentage of dining services food and beverage expenditures on products that are third party verified or both local and community-based
- Percentage of total dining service food expenditures on conventional animal products
Programs and Initiatives
The following links connect to specific Content Displays on the STARS website (AASHE membership and log-in required).
- Sustainable food and beverage purchasing programs
- Sustainable food and beverage inventories
- Methodologies used to track/inventory sustainable food and beverage purchases
- Vegan dining programs
- Initiatives to reduce food waste
- Tracking and reducing pre-consumer food waste
- Tracking and reducing post-consumer food waste
- Donating food to feed people
- Pre-consumer food waste composting
- Post-consumer food waste composting
- Using reusable service ware for "dine in" meals
- Providing reusable and/or third party certified compostable containers and service ware for "to go" meals
- Discounts for customers who use reusable containers
Scores
The following link connects to the Score Display on the STARS website (AASHE membership and log-in required).