University of California, Irvine
IN-25: Innovation B

UCI students initiated and published a College Sustainability Cookbook with inclusivity in mind, making sure recipes and tips were accessible and affordable for students. The authors created the cookbook to empower students to feel comfortable cooking for themselves, to help them make sustainable grocery purchases, and to help reduce landfill waste created by the disposal of fast food packaging.

2016 Global Food Initiative Fellow Dhruti Khetani (UCI ’17), in partnership with interns from UCI’s Campus as a Living Lab program – Vaneda Ngeam (UCI ’16) and Stephanie Silva (UCI ’17) – initiated the project when they began writing a student-oriented sustainability cookbook. 2017-18 Global Food Initiative Fellow Gracie Wong (UCI ’19) helped bring the cookbook to fruition, and with funding from The Green Initiative Fund (a student-run organization at UCI), the authors printed 6,000 copies of the cookbook, which were widely distributed among UCI students in the fall of 2017. The cookbook is also available online (see link provided elsewhere in this credit).

A campaign designed to improve awareness and adoption of the cookbook includes peer-to-peer training and dining hall programming, as well as social media and video resources. See the Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ucicookbook/

The comprehensive 56-page cookbook features full-color illustrations; tips on nutrition, local resources, and cooking essentials; and easy-to-follow recipes. It is organized around the following chapters:

1. True Cost of Food, with a focus on an individual’s carbon and water footprints
2. Stocking the Pantry
3. Kitchen Skills, including sections on zero waste
4. Breakfast
5. Lunch
6. Dinner
7. Desserts
8. Snacks
9. Crockpot recipes

Gracie Wong presented the cookbook in a poster session at the California Higher Education Sustainability Conference at UC Santa Barbara in June 2017. She recently received a $1,000 “My Last Trash” grant from the UC Office of the President to host a cooking program at UCI’s on-campus housing units.

The cookbook was highlighted on Page 27 of the University of California’s 2017 Annual Report on Sustainability Practices and can be highlighted from a link in the online report: http://www.ucop.edu/sustainability/_files/annual-sustainability-report2017.pdf

Gracie Wong is a third-year undergraduate double majoring in Earth System Science and Public Health Policy. She received Global Food Initiative Fellowships through the UC President’s Global Food Initiative in 2016-17 and 2017-18.

For more information about Gracie and her current project, see: http://sustainability.uci.edu/2017/07/13/201718-food-and-climate-student-fellows/