| Overall Rating | Gold - expired |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 81.82 |
| Liaison | Ryan Ihrke |
| Submission Date | Feb. 23, 2018 |
| Executive Letter | Download |
Green Mountain College
OP-7: Food and Beverage Purchasing
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
0.62 / 6.00 |
Ryan
Ihrke Director of Sustainability Sustainability |
Percentage of dining services food and beverage expenditures on products that are third party verified under one or more recognized food and beverage sustainability standards or Local & Community-Based:
Does the institution wish to pursue Part 2 of this credit (expenditures on conventional animal products)? (If data is not available, respond “No”):
Percentage of total dining services food and beverage expenditures on conventional animal products (meat, poultry, fish/seafood, eggs, and dairy products that do NOT qualify in either the Third Party Verified or Local & Community-Based category):
A brief description of the sustainable food and beverage purchasing program, including how the sustainability impacts of products in specific categories are addressed (e.g. meat, poultry, fish/seafood, eggs, dairy, produce, tea/coffee):
The College will strive to ensure by 2020, that all poultry and pork served in the dining hall will be humanely-sourced from humane-certified vendors. Beef will also be purchased from humane-certified vendors whenever financially feasible and available.
Additionally, GMC will move to convert 40% of food purchasing to local and community based and/or sustainably certified vendors
Specifically, food purchases will meet at least one of the following criteria defined by STARS:
• Local and community-based
And/or
• Third party verified to be ecologically sound, fair and/or humane
Food and beverage purchases that meet both criteria listed above (e.g. local community-based products that are Certified Organic) should not be double-counted.
Local community- based products:
• Are sourced from local community-based producers (directly or through distributors)
• Contain raw ingredients (excluding water) that are third party verified and/or locally harvested and produced (e.g. bread made with Organic flour or local honey) and
• Exclude products from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), products that have minimal nutritional value (e.g. soda, chewing gum, candies made predominantly from sweeteners), and products from producers that have been convicted of one or more labor law violations within the previous three years.
Products that are not local and community-based must be third party verified to count. Recognized third party standards and certifications for food and beverages are outlined in the STARS Technical Manual.
An inventory of the institution’s sustainable food and beverage purchases that includes for each product: the description/type; label, brand or producer; and the category in which it is being counted and/or a description of its sustainability attribute(s):
A brief description of the methodology used to conduct the inventory, including the timeframe and how representative samples accounted for seasonal variation (if applicable):
General methodology:
All Invoices during the sample period from Chartwell’s (GMC’s dining services company) were examined for local and community-based, and/or sustainability certified purchases purchases by GMC’s sustainability office. Researchers examined vendor websites and conferred with dining services staff to screen products for the criteria.
Time Boundaries: February 2017 and October 2016 invoices were reviewed and categorized. These two months allow for seasonal variation representing times when local food is more widely available(October) and less available(February)
Physical Boundaries: Local was defined as grown within 250 miles to be consistent with STARS.
Third-party Certification: The list of STARS-appropriate certifications were used as a screen for this designation.
Percentage of total dining services expenditures on Real Food A (0-100):
Percentage of total dining services expenditures on Real Food B (0-100):
Which of the following food service providers are present on campus and included in the total food and beverage expenditure figures?:
| Present? | Included? | |
| Dining operations and catering services operated by the institution | No | No |
| Dining operations and catering services operated by a contractor | Yes | Yes |
| Student-run food/catering services | Yes | No |
| Franchises (e.g. national or global brands) | No | No |
| Convenience stores | No | No |
| Vending services | Yes | No |
| Concessions | No | No |
A brief description of purchased food and beverage products that have other sustainability attributes not recognized above :
Additional percentage of dining services food and beverage expenditures on conventional products with other sustainability attributes not recognized above (0-100) :
The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
Data represents Fiscal Year 2017.
Data represents Fiscal Year 2017.
The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.