The hidden process behind your campus dining meals — and why it matters more than you think.
Every time you swipe into the dining hall, your choices are just getting started. Behind the scenes though, an intricate web of decisions has already unfolded about what food will be on your plate. This is part of the procurement process. Is the food locally sourced? How were the animals raised? Was the produce ethically farmed? What did it cost, not just in monetary value but for the planet?
First Things First: What Is Procurement?
- Procurement is simply the process of finding and buying the goods and services an organization needs to run. Think of it like grocery shopping, but at a massive institutional scale.
- For a university dining operation, procurement means deciding which supplier to buy from, which distributors to work with, and which products to purchase.
- The procurement process gives buyers like Michigan Dining the power to compare vendors across price, quality, and organizational values, and to choose the ones that best align their standards and values.
Why Does Sustainable Procurement Matter?
Most universities focus on their direct emissions, the energy they use and the vehicles they utilize, categorized under scope 1 and 2 emissions. But scope 3 emissions, which include the indirect emissions embedded in the products you buy, are often much larger and complex to tackle.
Food systems are one of the largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, with socio-environmental impacts such as farmworker conditions, animal welfare and land use. A significant share of food’s carbon footprint is largely driven by the transportation, the distance products travel from supplier to buyer. To reduce this, MDining prioritizes local, sustainable sourcing, defining local meat as produced within 250 miles of the Ann Arbor campus. The program supports over 30 Michigan farmers and suppliers, focusing on reducing carbon footprints.
What ends up on the menu also directly shapes procurement decisions, choosing plant-based options over red meat significantly reduces emissions, given red meat’s huge environmental footprint across land use, water consumption, and grazing. Livestock production is responsible for 14–18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, including nearly a third of all methane emissions worldwide. The simple choice of swapping beef with chicken or plant-based option can significantly reduce that footprint.
MDining’s ‘Sustainable Mondays’ offers a more sustainable menu that focuses on plant-based proteins, poultry, and fish, and away from red meat. This shift has reduced the carbon footprint of our menus by as much as 60% on Mondays compared to other days of the week. If you are curious on the environmental impact of your diet, you can calculate here.
This is where the push for sustainability procurement at MDining comes in.
MDining’s Sustainability Push
MDining recognizes the complexity of food systems and launched a four-phase research initiative to weave sustainability directly into how it purchases food. The process kickstarted with a foundational research which moved into identifying the right metrics to track, evaluating different sustainability certifications across food categories, and finally implementing a supplier scorecard. The scorecard is a tool that ranks and compares vendors based on different criteria with sustainability being one of the key components. Instead of choosing suppliers based on price alone, MDining can now score vendors on other factors like carbon footprint and animal welfare, and use that to guide purchasing decisions.
How Can You Buy Responsibly?
- Next time when you go grocery shopping, you can look out for products that’s b-certified, certified humane, USDA organic, certified sustainable seafood. The logo is usually printed on the product’s packaging.
- Adopt plant-based meat options to reduce your carbon footprint.
- Opt for refill options and buy dry goods in bulk where possible to reduce packaging, such as at By the Pound in Ann Arbor. Also look out for products with the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) label or compostable packaging.
- Buy local produce and farm products from Argus Farm Stop, Campus Farm, or Ann Arbor Farmers Market.
If you are interested in learning more, you can download the following whitepaper here or drop us an email at mds-sustainability@umich.edu.
Sharmane is a Sustainability Intern at MDining.