Skip to main content Skip to secondary navigation
Notice

Under Construction

Thank you for your understanding while the site is being renovated. If you need help finding something, please let us know.

Contact us
Main content start

R&DE Tackles Climate Change, Bite by Bite

Former student Kana Cummings shows off a meal at the Florence Moore Hall salad bar in March 2022. (Image credit: Alice Pyo, Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises)

In 2023, R&DE Stanford Dining, Hospitality & Auxiliaries (SDHA) partnered with the university’s Scope 3 Emissions Program to set a public target to reduce its emissions from food purchases by 25 percent by 2030, compared to its 2019 baseline. For the past two years, SDHA and its One Plate, One Planet sustainable food program have served as the pilot division for Stanford’s Scope 3 Emissions Program that launched in 2021 to address all the indirect emissions that are influenced by the university’s operations, but not directly emitted by the university. This includes all purchased goods, including food. To reduce emissions, SDHA will reduce the amount of beef, poultry, pork, dairy, and egg purchased and increase the use of sustainable seafood, legumes, nuts/seeds, and grains to develop equally delicious alternative meals.

“There’s a large desire among many students to take action, to do something positive about climate change,” said Sophie Egan, director of the R&DE Stanford Food Institute and Sustainable Food Systems. “It is very empowering for students to see that they can make a positive impact on the climate through their own actions by selecting meal options that happen to be better for them and better for the planet.”

R&DE, in support of the Scope 3 Emissions Program, aims to influence outside organizations as well. “It is not just about the work we do as an individual organization, but how we work collectively to reduce our climate impact,” said Eric Montell, assistant vice provost of SDHA. “Our goal is to partner with other leading universities, researchers, students, and organizations to effectively combat this climate crisis.”

With that goal in mind, SDHA and the Scope 3 Emissions Program developed a robust and well-researched methodology to measure and reduce food-related emissions, which they also published in 2023. This is an open-source carbon accounting tool for food purchases, which can help other institutions and foodservice organizations plan, measure, and execute emissions reduction measures. To learn more, read the jointly published methodology white paper and SDHA’s Food Choice Architecture Playbook.

More News