Food reconnection

ASU seeks to ensure the ASU community is connected with the need for food equity, access and sustainable food choices, such as plant-forward, organic and Fair Trade certified options. Starting with Sun Devil Hospitality and incorporated across the enterprise, ASU offers many programs and tools to achieve food system sustainability.

Commitments

Earn and retain at least 50% of the points in the food- and dining-related credits of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education Sustainability Tracking and Rating System by fiscal year 2020.
- Update: In FY 2019, ASU achieved 3.9 out of 8 available points, earning 48.75% of the food and dining-related points.
Eliminate food insecurity among ASU community members by fiscal year 2020.
- Update: In-Progress
  - Activities supporting this goal:
    - Student Advocacy offers a basic needs resource page to include food security programs offered in the community and on campus. Visit the EOSS resources website for more information.
    - The Pitchfork Pantry is a student-operated service for students at the Downtown and Tempe campuses, with Pop-up pantries at the West and Polytechnic campuses. The pantry served 2,100 students from fall 2020 to spring 2021.
    - Vouchers for students in need are available for Borderlands Produce Rescue events held on the ASU campuses. Reach out to Student Advocacy to learn more about this program.
Provide local, organic gardening opportunities to all university community members by fiscal year 2021.
- Update: In-progress
  - Activities supporting this goal:
    - Adelphi Garden (Tempe campus): Student-run community garden is located on Tempe campus in the Adelphi Residential Complex supported by the School of Sustainably and Residential Life. Provides a place for students to learn basic gardening principles and make new friends.
    - Cultivate Garden Club (Downtown campus): Cultivate Garden Club serves the downtown campus by volunteering their time to work at various local community gardens and tends 3 raised planter beds on campus, producing seasonal vegetables and herbs.
    - Food for Change student organization (Tempe campus): seeks to create long-term sustainable and holistic change within the ASU food system with education and collaborative projects. The current project brings together the facilities team and students to develop a plan to implement raised garden beds in fall 2020 within Sonora Hall to grow edible and native plants and provide a space that fosters engagement and wellness.
    - Garden Commons (Polytechnic campus: This urban green space and community garden include 18 raised growing beds, a citrus orchard, compost area, grapevines, vertical herb gardens, a pavilion and an indoor resource room. The garden provides hands-on learning and educates the campus community on local food systems and urban gardening techniques.
    - PPE 240 Physical Activity in the Garden Course: This one-credit Physical Activity class through the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College offers hands-on learning about basic gardening principles at the Tempe campus.

Programs

Borderlands

ASU hosts periodic Borderlands Produce On Wheels – With Out Waste food markets, in which vegetables from refrigerated food warehouses at the Arizona-Mexico border are brought to or near campus for anyone to buy.

Engrained Cafe

Engrained is a fast-casual, full-service restaurant designed to be an educational food experience surrounding sustainability, focusing on fresh, organic ingredients or third-party certified ingredients. Engrained Café features both vegan and vegetarian options.

Fair Trade Designated Campus

ASU is the largest and 50th designated Fair Trade University within the Fair Trade Campaigns Network. We support Fair Trade items throughout the campus with the help of Sun Devil Hospitality in the Pod stores and within the dining halls.

Kitchen Café

Kitchen Café is a not-for-profit venue and upper-division course staffed by nutrition students in the program's Management of Food Service Systems course.

Sun Devil Hospitality

Each dining hall offers a vegan food station that includes Beyond Meat options campus-wide and many third-party certified sustainable food choices.

Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems

The Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems develops innovative ideas and solutions to the various challenges in existing food systems. The Center’s work takes a systems-level, transdisciplinary approach by researching water and energy use and carbon footprint along the entire food supply chain, nutrition of food, agriculture technology, and the well-being and livelihood of farmers and others working in food systems.

Tools

An Apple A Day Advantage

Eating just one apple a day instead of a less healthy snack is a positive way to incorporate healthy and fresh food into your daily routine. Check out the nutritional benefits with this tip sheet.

Decidedly Green Catering

This menu offers sustainably sourced catering options from plant-based to vegan and fair trade and sustainably certified seafood.

Fresh Start to the Week

Reduce the negative impact of the food you eat by committing to try some of the wide variety of non-animal protein options for some of your meals during the week at the Daily Roots station in any dining hall. You can also commit to go entirely vegetarian or vegan.