York University
OP-6: Food and Beverage Purchasing

-Fair Trade certified coffees are served at all York cafeterias as well as the majority of franchises and restaurants. -York’s own Las Nubes Fair Trade coffee served at all non-franchised locations as well as Rain Forest Alliance Certified Teas. -All shell eggs are cage-free -sustainable Seafood Strategy includes making York University MSC Chain of Custody certified campus by the end of 2015.

-32% of purchases are either local (Ontario), Sustainable (Seafood) or Fair (Fair Trade, Rain Forest Alliance). -23% of produce is grown locally -Aramark foods is in an exclusive partnership with the Ontario Greenbelt Fund and Sysco Toronto in the 100KM food Hub pilot program meant to significantly improve our access to local products. We are in Year One of the pilot. -Fair Trade certified coffees are served at all York cafeterias as well as the majority of franchises and restaurants. -York’s own Las Nubes Fair Trade coffee served at all non-franchised locations as well as Rain Forest Alliance Certified Teas. -All shell eggs are cage-free -sustainable Seafood Strategy includes making York University MSC Chain of Custody certified campus by the end of 2015. - Dining Service has introduced the “Healthy Kitchen” to promote more vegan/vegetarian and local options -Monthly food features including farmers produce and ingredients (e..g. Features in September—apples from Ontario farmers) -Trayless Dining: By dining trayless, we help positively impact the waste stream. Dining trayless minimizes food waste, conserves energy and water, and reduces the amount of cleaning chemicals entering the waste stream. -100% of used fryer oil is recycled -Vegan Monday initiative in partnership with the Health Ed team. -Food Services and Aramark have introduced the Urban Cultivator, an all year round greenhouse where fresh herbs and ingredients are being grown in house and used daily at Aramark locations throughout campus, including at salad bars, the Healthy Kitchen station and Booster Juice is not outsourcing for their ingredients, they are using the freshly grown ones for their "boosters".

Aramark has a sophisticated product tracking system which allows us to report virtually every purchase made by our campus team over a given period of time. Whenever we require information on procurement patterns, reports can be generated detailing purchase volumes and total spend for any particular item, anywhere in the country. We are currently in the process of building more capabilities into the system and one of the more useful features will be the addition of source and processing location data attached to every item in the database. We are working very closely with food suppliers of all types and sizes to acquire this info and make it readily available. Progress in purchasing habits with respect to sustainability and the support of local producers cannot occur without a reliable benchmark. Learning more about how and where the food we buy is grown, raised and packaged will allow us to create such a benchmark and proceed to the important next step of setting targets for improvement.