Overall Rating	Gold - expired
Overall Score	68.22
Liaison	Mary Ellen Mallia
Submission Date	Dec. 21, 2018
Executive Letter	Download

STARS v2.1

University at Albany
OP-7: Food and Beverage Purchasing

Status	Score	Responsible Party
	1.10 / 6.00	Mary Ellen Mallia Director of Environmental Sustainability Finance and Business

"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

This credit requires:

A completed STARS Food and Beverage Purchasing Inventory,
An itemized inventory based on output from the Real Food Calculator, or
An alternative inventory that includes for each product:

Product vendor
Product label/brand
Product description
The category in which the product qualifies (Third Party Verified or Local & Community Based)
Information justifying inclusion: the standards met if the product is third party verified; ownership, size, distance, production methods for Local & Community Based products

Part 1

Third Party Verified and Community Based Products

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:

20.80

Part 2

Animal Products

Does the institution wish to pursue Part 2 of this credit (expenditures on conventional animal products)? (If data is not available, respond “No”):

Yes

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):

31.92

Food and Beverage Purchasing Inventory

Required if pursuing either part of the credit:

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):

University Auxiliary Services (UAS) and Sodexo partner to bring local and sustainable food to the dining halls, convenience stores, vending machines, catering services and concessions.A priority is placed on the distributors to find NY sourced, local and sustainably produced products. Our professionally-trained chefs write our menus to take advantage of the fresh fruits and vegetables that are naturally in season. We partner with many local distributors to bring local products including Byrne Dairy, Gillette Creamery and Purdy and Sons among others.

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):

UAlbany STARS Revised Food and Beverage list.xlsx

A brief description of the methodology used to conduct the inventory, including the timeframe and how representative samples accounted for seasonal variation (if applicable):

The purchases of food are collected by Sodexo. UAlbany's Director of Sustainability reviews the purchases to determine which will be considered local and/or sustainable. The criteria for sustainable food purchases are outlined by STARS. In addition, UAlbany participates in a SUNY wide initiative called Farm to SUNY. This entails placing an emphasis on procuring products from NYS. As a result, our local purchases include items grown and produced in NYS. However, since Albany is centrally located, we have not found the NYS items are being procured from a distance greater than 250 miles and thus would also meet the STAR's criteria. Any items included in the dining services that are not food (such as paper products, trash bags, cleaning supplies, etc) were eliminated from the total food spend number.

If uploading output from the Real Food Calculator, provide:

Percentage of total dining services expenditures on Real Food A (0-100):

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Percentage of total dining services expenditures on Real Food B (0-100):

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Required if pursuing either part of the credit:

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	Yes	Yes
Dining operations and catering services operated by a contractor	Yes	Yes
Student-run food/catering services	No	No
Franchises (e.g. national or global brands)	Yes	Yes
Convenience stores	Yes	Yes
Vending services	Yes	No
Concessions	Yes	Yes

Optional Fields

A brief description of purchased food and beverage products that have other sustainability attributes not recognized above :

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Additional percentage of dining services food and beverage expenditures on conventional products with other sustainability attributes not recognized above (0-100) :

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The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:

https://www.ualbanydining.com/explore/sustainability

Additional documentation to support the submission:

2018 University Ualbany Revised food and beverages_QXTiAG9.xlsx

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

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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.