NYU Food (& Purchasing) Subcommittee Update

The Food & Purchasing Subcommittee of NYU’s Sustainability Task Force will be having our last meeting of the year next Tuesday! As a group of ten students, faculty, and staff of the University, we’ve been meeting every other week since early October, and have made progress on several of our goals for the semester.

On the Food side of things, two official and two unofficial members of the subcommittee were able to attend the Real Food Summit in early November: Annie Myers, Adam Brock, Shane Crary-Ross, and Veena Bontu. Following the Summit, Annie, Adam, and Shane met with NYU’s new district chef Jeramie Garlick at an event organized by Footprint Forward, and learned about the sustainability programs initiated by Aramark at NYU, particularly the Hayden Dining Hall Pilot Project.

On November 14th, NYU Director of Energy and Sustainability Cecil Scheib and Sustainability Task Force Project Administrator Jeremy Friedman joined the Director of NYU Dining Services for “Understanding Sustainable Dining Options,” a web conference held by John Turenne of Sustainable Food Systems and Scott Berlin of UC Santa Cruz. Following the conference, NYU’s participants discussed the success of the Hayden Dining Hall Pilot Project and the potential for more sustainable food initiatives in the future. As a result of this discussion, the Sustainability Task Force is currently preparing a formal request for information about the food purchased at Hayden as well as all NYU Dining Halls, particularly whether it is local, organic, and/or fair trade, or conventional.

As a committee, we have also compiled a list of barriers to making the food system at NYU more sustainable, as the Task Force is gathering information on the difficulties faced in each of the eight subcommittees.

Finally, we are working on compiling “Sustainable Catering Guidelines” that will be distributed to the different departments at NYU next semester. Although a few buildings on campus are required to use Aramark catering, and others (the Law School, for example) have their own catering services, many schools and departments could potentially change their suppliers to caterers that use primarily local and organic products.

Our student members are also active members of Real Food New York.

The Food & Purchasing Committee will be having our last meeting of the year next Tuesday, December 18th at 12:30pm. If you are affiliated with NYU, and are interested in being involved with sustainability efforts related to food or purchasing at the University, please contact ahm259@nyu.edu!