An Insider's Guide to Sustainability Certifications for Campus Dining
College dining directors join sustainability professionals on the front line of creating a sustainable future for their schools. Sustainability certifications offer a powerful way to demonstrate progress, achieve recognition for efforts, and unlock tangible benefits for an institution and the environment.
While implementing sustainable practices is commendable in itself, obtaining third-party certifications offers several key advantages:
Credibility and Recognition: Certifications provide a standardized and verifiable way to demonstrate your commitment to sustainability, differentiating your program from those without such validation.
Roadmap and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Certifications often provide clear guidelines and measurable targets, helping you structure your sustainability initiatives and track your progress.
Engagement and Education: The process of pursuing certification can foster greater engagement among staff and students, raising awareness and promoting a culture of sustainability on campus and beyond.
Competitive Advantage: In an increasingly eco-conscious world, sustainability certifications can enhance your school's reputation, attract environmentally conscious students and faculty, and potentially secure funding opportunities for additional green projects.
So where should you begin when considering pursuing a sustainability certification? To get an insider’s take, we interviewed Nichelle Huizar, Sustainability Administrator at the University of Southern California—a school consistently recognized for its focus on sustainability. Nichelle shared her perspective on three top sustainability certifications held by USC.
1. Green Restaurant Association (GRA)
The GRA offers a dining-specific Certified Green Restaurant certification, awarding up to four stars based on a program's performance in areas like energy, water, waste, and sustainable sourcing. The GRA places a high value on reuse practices, awarding points for actions like implementing reusable programs or salvaging existing kitchen equipment rather than purchasing new items.
Huizar shared that pursuing a GRA certification provided a helpful roadmap and important measurement criteria for USC's dining program. These frameworks were also valuable when streamlining their dining staff’s training around sustainability practices.
In addition to providing practical guidance for meeting their sustainability goals, going through the certification process helped the dining program showcase USC's leadership in sustainability. As of 2024, all three USC residential dining halls have been awarded four stars by the Green Restaurant Association, a status that communicates a high-level of dedication to systems-level sustainability.
“Waste diversion is huge in getting you from one level to the next,” Nichelle says of USC’s recent jump from three to four GRA stars, “Partnering with USEFULL was a big part of what helped us achieve that.”
Nichelle also noted that these certifications provide a strong starting point for new dining programs, especially when opening new retail dining spaces on campus.
2. Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE)
AASHE takes a broader approach, evaluating sustainability across the entire institution, with dining as a component. With a presence in more than 50 countries and 363 actively rated institutions, AASHE STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System) is the most widely recognized standard for higher education sustainability in the world. STARS awards points based on sustainability performance in five categories: academics, engagement, operations, planning and administration, and innovation and leadership.
AASHE provides a standardized measurement for benchmarking not only against your campus’ own progress, but also the progress of other institutions. Their website publicizes the scorecards of every reporting institution. On USC’s report, for example, you can view a description of each sustainability achievement for which AASHE has credited them and how many points it earned them toward their ranking.
Nichelle also pointed out to us a little-known perk of joining AASHE: the community benefits. Becoming an AASHE-rated school enables inter-university networking, empowering schools to share best practices and collaborate on overcoming sustainability challenges. In Nichelle’s case, she was able to use a school in her AASHE network in order to negotiate a more sustainable deal with a beverage vendor. USC wanted to eliminate its use of plastic packaging on campus, but one major vendor wasn’t willing to cooperate. Through the AASHE grapevine, Nichelle knew that the University of Virginia had already had a similar conversation with the same vendor, so she was able to connect with their sustainability team and use their negotiation experience to her advantage.
To pursue AASHE STARS, USC partnered with Greener U, a third-party sustainability reporting organization. The organization guided them through the AASHE reporting process, which Nichelle described as being more difficult the first time, but easily repeated after that. Once her team was familiar with the data they’d need to provide, it was just a matter of plugging updated data into the report in order to renew their certification.
USC achieved a Silver Star AASHE rating in 2021, and then leveled-up to a Gold Star rating in 2023, an accomplishment Nichelle is proud of for many reasons, not least of all for “demonstrating USC’s commitment to environmentalism beyond just a passing trend.”
3. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a globally recognized green building certification program developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. It focuses on the environmental impact of building design, construction, and operation.
USC recently opened the doors to a LEED Platinum-certified Computer Science Building. While not directly related to dining operations, dining facilities constructed up to LEED standards can reflect a university's commitment to sustainable infrastructure. Certifications can be obtained for both new and existing buildings on campus, and their highly recognizable certification plaques communicate a strong message to students and visitors on campus: this school is making a big effort toward sustainability.
Reuse as an entry point to top certifications
Waste reduction is a large part of what your dining program will be evaluated on for any of the above sustainability certifications. To reduce waste, expanding on your reuse efforts is a powerful starting point.
Consider these benefits:
Waste Diversion: By replacing disposable containers with reusable options, you can dramatically reduce waste sent to landfills.
Cost Savings: Reusables programs can lead to long-term savings by eliminating recurring expenses on disposables—and with USEFULL’s leasing option, you can unlock those savings on day one.
Enhanced Sustainability Profile: Demonstrating a commitment to reusables through engagement and education strengthens your sustainability narrative and resonates with environmentally conscious stakeholders.
USEFULL offers a turnkey reusable container program specifically designed for college campuses. You can keep focused on your dining operations while we streamline your reusables implementation process and provide support with logistics, tracking, and student engagement.
–
Is a new certification calling your name? Let us help you rank even higher.