Campus Sustainability Plan 2020: "Real" Food, Courses, Student Orientation

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Lehigh’s Campus Sustainability Plan 2020 was formally released to the campus community in January 2017.  It is a comprehensive plan for achieving a more sustainable campus by 2020.  For the next three years, this plan will guide departments and resources to advance our institutional commitment to sustainability through the implementation of goals.  Since the Campus Sustainability Plan 2020 was adopted, Lehigh has made great progress toward several of its goals.  We have highlighted progress toward a few of these goals below.

Academics & Educational Experience

GOAL FOR 2020: Complete an inventory of academic courses that include sustainability and make publicly available.

Lehigh has completed an undergraduate and graduate inventory of sustainability academic courses.  It is updated yearly.

Operations

GOAL FOR 2020: Achieve 20% of food aligned with 1 or more of 4 categories (local/community-based, fair, ecologically sound, or humane).

The Real Food Challenge is a collaboration between the Office of Sustainability and Lehigh Dining Services to shift 20% of our existing university food budget away from industrial farms and junk food and towards local/community-based, fair, ecologically sound and humane food sources—what we call “real food”—by 2020.  Since 2013-2014, we have increased our “real” food percentage from 2 to 10 percent.  President Simon recently signed the “Real” Food Campus Commitment, which makes this 20% goal by 2020 official. This commitment will help Lehigh to support a healthy food system that not only supports environmental stewardship, but also respects the rights of those that harvest our food.

Campus & Community Engagement

GOAL FOR 2020: Provide an opportunity for all undergraduate, transfer and graduate students to participate in orientation activities and programming that include sustainability.

Since 2013-2014, Lehigh has increased the percentage of incoming undergraduate students that are provided an opportunity to participate in orientation programming that prominently includes sustainability from 10 to 100 percent.  All incoming students now have the option of attending a sustainability symposium, participating in a sustainability information session, stopping by the Lehigh Sustainability resource table, as well as participating in the low-waste, “real” food orientation picnic.  The Office of Sustainability also leads a pre-orientation prelusion program called SustainabLEHIGH, which is focused on sustainability.

How will YOU help Lehigh reach its sustainability goals? Check out Lehigh University’s Campus Sustainability Plan 2020 and let us know what you think!