Here is Hangyi’s 4th blog.
Review the six focus areas in the Sustainability Strategic Plan 2030. Identify and describe in detail how your project aligns with one or more of the focus areas. Be sure to think outside of the box. Each project aligns with more than one focus area, although it might not be immediately obvious.
1. Climate Action: One of our project team’s goals is to reduce food carbon emissions, which would be a cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Excessive emissions and the use of carbon have caused greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect. In our project, the goal is to have students aware of carbon emission in food, and they are encouraged to have less-carbon-emission food. By tracing the food carbon footprint and reducing the carbon emissions of food, we can detect and reduce them. Finding alternatives for foods that contain high carbon emission is also the same idea as “using renewable energy sources,” and this process is also like energy conservation.
2. Educational Experience: One thing our team is trying to do is to build a webpage that could inform students of the environmental cost of their lunch.
We are also definitely going to collect and analyze data from Lehigh dining hall records to make sure everything is on track and even find new ways to improve the process.
As we are implementing our plan, research will be conducted and focus on the Lehigh dining hall food system and food ingredients.
3 Campus Operations: Our project will provide new and innocent ways for campus operation. By tracing food carbon footprint and identifying high carbon emission foods, Lehigh community and dining hall are able to reduce the production and save costs as well as increase the whole foods. Additionally, high carbon emission foods, like hamburgers and cheese, are mostly harmful to student’s health. By bringing awareness to food with high carbon footprints, students will be more likely to choose low carbon footprint foods. In this way, the overall well-being of the university could be improved. After implementing our project, we expect to see a quantitative decrease in the consumption of high carbon emission food, the overall campus carbon emissions, and a more reasonable food structure in the production.
4 Health & Wellness: this one is the tightest to our project.
As mentioned above, high carbon emission foods, like hamburgers and cheese, are mostly harmful to student’s health. So these kinds of food are usually given a red icon or sticker, which is a “warning” for students to eat less of these foods. If the consumption drops by a large percent, it is reasonable that the dining hall will provide and produce less of them. It would be a virtuous circle. This improves the food structure and choices provided by the school and guarantees the health of all Lehigh communities. As a result of our plan, we expect more students to be aware of the food choice, not only for decreasing carbon emission but also for their own body health.
Identify the key Lehigh University-based and external stakeholders for your project. For each stakeholder:
Describe what their interest in your project might be.
What resources might they provide?
How does your work further their goals?
How might you engage with them?
- Lehigh dining hall faculty and staff (most important)
By bringing awareness to food with high carbon footprints, students will be more likely to choose low carbon footprint foods. By applying our project and pan, the production of foods that contain high carbon emissions will possibly decrease. And these high carbon foods usually cost much more than their alternatives. So one benefit for the dining hall faculty will be that we can help them possibly save cost and increase revenue.
One of the members, Lauren, has already offered us help. She provided more information on the Lehigh dining hall and food system that we need. This helps us to have a clear vision and plan for our future work. Also, one of our plans is to make stickers and icons and connect them with each food. They can also assist us with that by providing access to that.
I believe Lehigh dining hall is also part of the Lehigh Sustainability Strategic Plan. So our mission could help them reduce excessive carbon emissions, thereby reducing environmental pollution. Also, the goal of Lehigh dining hall is to reduce expenses without affecting student satisfaction. And our project could lead to that goal by bringing awareness to food with high carbon emissions.
We, as a team, will reach out to them constantly. We are currently meeting them through zoom and sending emails to them, while we would meet and talk with them in person as we are going to make a soft launch of our project.
2. Instagram
This is not a formal way to describe it, but we actually use Instagram as well as other social media, and our effort could also slightly make an impact on Instagram. Instagram provides a platform for our promotion, while our account, as an influencer, makes the platform more dynamic. We will constantly make posts to show our work process to actually “engage with them.”