Last year, millions of US students started seeing the social and environmental
impacts of the food they ate through an exclusive climate labeling
partnership
between Chartwells Higher Education —
foodservice provider to over 300 colleges and universities across the US — and
sustainability intelligence company HowGood, which has
the world’s largest database on ingredient and product sustainability. Today,
the companies shared initial results from their partnership — revealing a
significant increase in student demand for lower-impact meals after HowGood’s
climate labels were introduced.
In May 2022, Chartwells partnered with HowGood to measure the overall
sustainability of its menu items based on eight core social and environmental
impact metrics: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, processing, water
usage, soil health, land use, working conditions, biodiversity
and animal welfare. After Chartwells added climate-impact labels to dining
hall menus, student demand for low-impact recipes increased — with Chartwells
recording a 37 percent rise in the production of recipes that received positive
ratings from HowGood. Furthermore, in Fall 2022, less than a third of
Chartwells’ recipes menus nationwide received positive HowGood scores. One year
later, nearly half (44 percent) of recipes on Chartwells’ partner school menus
nationwide received a positive rating. Chartwells plans to increase this number
moving forward by integrating GHG emissions-reducing potential as a criterion in
recipe development and innovation along with nutrition, taste and cost.
Image credit: Chartwells
“We were thrilled to be the first and only foodservice provider to introduce
holistic climate labels to university dining halls,” said Monalisa
Prasad, Director of Sustainability at
Chartwells Higher Education. “The feedback so far from students and campus
partners has been overwhelmingly positive. We’re continuing to improve the
program by offering a broader range of low-impact menu options and making
positive impacts easier to understand through measures like simplified
iconography.”
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Conscientious eaters are increasingly cognizant of the climate impact of food
items — recent research suggests that consumers are willing to pay
more
for food products that exhibit a lower carbon footprint; and in restaurants,
carefully reframing menu
language
can successfully nudge diners toward more climate-friendly food options.
Forward-thinking foodies have embraced carbon-labeled food items from brands
including
Oatly,
Quorn
and Strong
Roots;
and on menus at
Chipotle,
Just
Salad
and Hilton
hotels.
Chartwells’ culinary team is using
Latis,
HowGood’s proprietary digital platform, to continually improve recipes based on
their GHG emissions-reducing potential. The platform allows Chartwells to test
and innovate menu items with comprehensive, ingredient-level insights across all
eight impact metrics for over 33,000 ingredients. These measures will help
Chartwells and its partner campuses advance their sustainability goals by
increasing the inclusion of more sustainable meals and helping guests make more
informed choices.
“When Chartwells brought us the idea of adding climate labels to the dining
halls, we were immediately sold; it was the exact kind of innovative and
sustainably focused thinking we’ve
come to expect from Chartwells,” said Julie
Bannister, Assistant Vice
Chancellor of Auxiliary Services at The University of Pittsburgh. “Our
university’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2037, and we’re thankful to have a
food service partner that not only helps us achieve that goal but empowers our
students to make their own decisions that are better for the planet.”
"We have been continually inspired by our partnership with Chartwells," said
Christina Lampert, Director of
Growth and Innovation at HowGood — a leader in helping brands carbon-label
their
products.
"Their commitment to sustainability can be seen not only in their transparent
communications with students, but also in their carbon reduction- focused recipe
development work. It has been a joy to enable them with the tools they need to
do both, and we are so pleased to see such clear results one year into our
partnership."
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Nov 1, 2023 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 6pm GMT / 7pm CET