Rebecca Grekin, a Stanford Ph.D. candidate in the Energy Science and Engineering department within the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, has been honored for her work with TASTE Food, The Automated Scope 3 Tool for Tracking Emissions from Food. This year, the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has awarded Rebecca with the Student Sustainability Award, which recognizes students in higher education for their work in advancing leadership and promoting sustainability on campus.
TASTE Food is a python-based software that can help users sort food purchases into 18 categories that are frequently used to analyze food emissions, and the tool is available for free online. Rebecca developed this emissions tracking software as part of her master’s research, hoping that it will continue to “help universities and other organizations make data-driven decisions about food purchasing and emissions for many years to come.” When asked what got Rebecca interested in this field, she said “being Brazilian, I’ve always been passionate about sustainability because it was something I was exposed to at a very young age. For my master’s degree, I wanted to understand the impact of using different emissions factors for estimating emissions, and food was a great case study because we’re used to thinking about amounts of food in different ways (e.g. both five pounds of potatoes and a $10 bag of potatoes). In studying the impact of different emissions factors, I realized I had to categorize all the food purchases for Stanford dining halls and didn’t want to do it by hand, and thus, TASTE Food was born and has grown significantly since!”
Curious to learn more about Rebecca’s tool, or to try it out? Check out the TASTE Food tool here and take a step towards understanding Scope 3 emissions in the food system more deeply.
Stanford has set a new benchmark for sustainability at live events through its first major concert hosted by Stanford Athletics and Stanford Live. Sustainable Stanford hosted a fireside chat with sustainability leadership from Live Nation and Warner Music Group in tandem with this milestone.
The Responsible Purchasing Department hosted an information session to inform the Stanford community about how everyday purchasing choices — like reusing, sourcing locally, and slowing shipping — can drive big sustainability impacts.
Design 1 students are reimagining campus sustainability ideate in collaboration with the Zero Waste team in the Office of Sustainability to turn class projects into real-world solutions for Stanford’s future.
