Collective Sustainable Purchasing

A purchasing alliance is enabling schools across six major cities to both save money and explore environmentally friendly products. How the collective works and other similar stories on this topic...

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What Happened?

The Urban School Food Alliance is purchasing sustainable food and lunchroom supplies on behalf of school systems in six major metropolitan areas. The compostable plates and utensils are made from sugar cane and can be reused as compost to support local farms. Because the school districts are purchasing the utensils as a group, they are able to buy in large quantities with significant savings.

The Goal

The Urban School Food Alliance represents school districts in Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, New York and Orlando. By acting as a united organization, the alliance aims to leverage its purchasing power to develop environmentally sound lunchroom products to make schools more sustainable. Because the influence of six large school systems is more powerful than each area’s district individually, the alliance hopes to achieve its mission at a lower cost.

The New York Times reported representatives from the Urban School Food Alliance are focused on setting the price for sustainable school supplies such as compostable lunch trays, rather than allowing manufacturers to control pricing.

When a district is interested in testing a new environmentally-friendly product, officials will seek out different providers and gather price bids. Once a seller has been selected and a contract written up, the other members of the alliance can join the agreement for the same deal – thus benefiting the districts and the manufacturers.

The Urban School Food Alliance is working on adding environmentally-friendly supplies, food and practices into academic settings for short and long-term benefits. Serving children organic, pesticide-free food will have obvious health benefits, while compostable supplies reduce waste production. Looking to the future, school district officials also hope by demonstrating the different options available for basic necessities such as trays and food, students will develop more responsible lifestyle habits and carry that mentality with them into adulthood.

When children are exposed to healthier food choices and smarter product purchases, they may be more likely to repeat this behavior as adults – thus creating a movement toward sustainable decision making.

Waste Not

At Swarthmore College, a recent Green Advisors audit of campus waste revealed much of what is considered trash is actually compostable and could be reused to support other production of materials. In fact, the experiment found just 7.6 percent of compost generated by the student body was properly allocated to compost bins, while the rest of was dismissed as waste.

Many schools are working on “greening” their infrastructure, food, supplies and activities. The Academy for Global Citizenship in Chicago created a handbook to guide school district officials interested in implementing green strategies to make their systems more sustainable. The environmentally-friendly programs focus on:

  • Energy consumption and generation
  • Transportation
  • Waste management
  • Water usage
  • Land usage and protection
  • Engagement of students, faculty, local government, businesses, residents and government agencies

Some of the more popular strategies included converting school bus fleets to hybrid or natural gas fuel systems, adding a school garden to campus grounds, switching to environmentally-friendly cleaning products, implementing tactics to reduce water consumption and focusing on waste reduction with enhanced recycling campaigns.

Smart School Systems

Gov1 has monitored different strategies schools are devising to make transportation more sustainable while reducing energy consumption.

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