I looked at greenreportcard.org which collects data from universities all over the country and grades their sustainability. For the 2011 report card, Smith College received an A on Food & Recycling. I was looking over the data and it all seemed pretty great, we buy a fair amount of food locally and we compost almost all kitchen scrap (the compost is given to a local farmer). But I felt like I wasn't really getting a good grasp on what the data was actually saying so I decided to compare it to Amherst College (the data for Mount Holyoke wasn't available).
Smith (student pop. 2,637) is larger than Amherst (1,791) but the spend more money on most foods than we do:
Smith Amherst
Fruits and Vegetables: $542,398 $429,792
Dairy: $447,548 $161,829
Eggs: $61,063 $46,236
Meat and Poultry: $255,642 $537,752
Seafood: $57,857 $123,701
Coffee: $13,383 $19,214
Amherst claims they buy locally (at least some portion) of everything, except cereal and beverages. Smith claims they buy (at least some portion) of everything but poultry, eggs, seafood, baked goods, cereals and sauces/salad dressings. For two colleges (of similar caliber) that are only 7 miles apart, why is Amherst buying so much of their food locally?
1 comment:
This is really really interesting. I'm curious about that "at least some portion" phrase, though. Is Amherst's meat bill so much more because they buy *most* of their meat locally? I wonder. And why isn't Smith buying MORE stuff locally?
Post a Comment