Disaster Dining

The Office of Sustainability at Western Washington University is coming up with new, sustainable ways to tackle food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Story by Katie Ramirez

December 11, 2020

A long line of students forms outside the Viking Union on a cold and windy fall day on Western Washington University’s largely deserted campus. Socially distanced, with their heavy-duty rain gear and reusable grocery bags, they wait to receive a weekly ration of fresh produce and non-perishables, which will help lessen the effects of one of the coronavirus pandemic’s more pressing issues: food insecurity.

Hosted every Friday of the fall quarter, the Free Food Fall Pop-Up is one of the ways Western is working to help students experiencing food insecurity. At the pop-ups, students choose from a range of items such as canned food, grains and local, organic produce at no cost.

“Groceries are something I do worry about every week. I try to budget myself, so it’s nice to have them, you know, provide a lot of stuff that costs less than when I go to the grocery store,” said Isabelle Rosel, a student at Western as she stood in line.

Food insecurity in Whatcom County has risen 38% since 2018, part of a larger trend heightened by the pandemic, according to a 2020 report from the non-profit Feeding America.

In the last couple of years, achieving food security has been a focal point in a broader discussion about sustainable food systems on campus. With guidance from the Office of Sustainability, Western adopted the Sustainability Action Plan in 2017, with the aim of improving sustainability efforts on campus, including the food system.

In the middle of the pandemic “if we’re not thinking about [an] individual’s well-being when we’re promoting sustainability, it’s just not going to work right now,” said Lindsey MacDonald, the interim director for the Office of Sustainability. “It’s potentially inappropriate, I would say, to maybe ask people to think about the environment beyond themselves when they’re concerned about ‘Where is my next meal coming from?’.”

During the fall quarter, MacDonald worked alongside Alyssa Tsukada, the engagement coordinator and student ambassador for the office to promote sustainability to students on and off-campus through a program called Sustainability Ambassadors. The focus of the program in the fall quarter was food justice and sovereignty.

Sustainability Ambassadors is a pandemic-adapted version of the previous Sustainability Representatives program that Western implemented in on-campus residence halls before funding got cut in the spring. The cuts came after more than 5,000 students at Western signed a petition to get reduced tuition for spring quarter in response to the shift to online classes triggered by the pandemic.

Western’s administration reduced tuition by 28.6%. Nearly half of the cuts came from the Services & Activities fee, which is funded by the housing and dining system. As a result, the Sustainability Representatives program lost funding.

“It’s one of those things where you don’t really see where all of the money is going until it’s gone,” said Tsukada. “And then you’re like, ‘Oh, shoot!’”

However, Sustainability Ambassadors is not a downgrade from its predecessor but rather presents an opportunity to engage the broader Western community, said Tsukada. Since it’s not directly tied to people living in campus dorms at the moment, the program can open up the sustainability discussion to off-campus students.

“Engagement is actually going really well. We’ve got some new participants, and it seems like there is a large amount of enthusiasm from everyone who’s just genuinely happy to be here, which is honestly one of my biggest goals,” said Tsukada.

Through Sustainability Ambassadors, students can engage virtually in an online course. At bi-weekly Zoom meetings students can discuss a weekly topic related to the office’s fall quarter theme.

Students living on campus with access to food from the university’s dining halls also contribute to Western’s sustainability efforts. The halls are operating at a reduced capacity to comply with Washington State health mandates and have moved to a dine-in or take-out system with reusable and compostable containers. When done eating, students can return their containers to the dining hall for reuse and receive a clean one.

Once things return to a new normal, the dining system will likely continue the program, allowing students living on campus to opt-in to take-out meals, said Stephen Wadsworth, the resident district manager for Aramark at Western, in an email.

The Western dining staff has also helped tackle food insecurity. Since April, they have been building meal kits and distributing them weekly to students in need. As of October, they have volunteered over 1,000 hours of their own time to shop and assemble the kits and have distributed over 2,000 of them so far.

Western’s efforts to tackle food insecurity are not isolated. In fact, they are part of a bigger global agenda. In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes 17 sustainable development goals. The goals call for urgent action to “improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth” while also working to minimize climate change and protect the environment. The second goal focuses on addressing food security, hunger, nutrition and sustainable agriculture.

Before the pandemic, there was evidence that relief programs for families and individuals experiencing food insecurity in the U.S. were successful. Food insecurity decreased by 11.1% between 2018 and 2019, according to a 2020 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Tackling food insecurity will take time, but food programs such as the ones at Western create a convenient yet sustainable way to meet students’ basic needs.

“I think Western is a great place to be to be working on sustainability work because it is so much part of the identity of the institution,” said MacDonald. “There is such a strong culture of individuals supporting sustainability.”

Katie Ramirez is a senior studying environmental education at Huxley College. She likes exploring the interdependent relationships between ecology, equity, and environment in sustainable issues.