Santa Monica Farmer’s Market: An Assessment of Food Waste and Green Packaging Strategies

The Santa Monica Farmers Markets (SMFMs) provide neighborhoods with sustainable agriculture, healthy living, and community engagement. Since not all of the markets have a formal zero waste program we decided to look into potential sustainability issues that could be affecting the markets’ business. Given the types of waste typically generated at food markets, we chose to focus our project on potential food and packaging waste. We developed an analysis of current environmental strategies based on S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Although the SMFMs already have environmentally sustainable practices in place, we found room for improvement. This includes contacting LA Compost to increase their environmental efficiency by keeping their composting local. Unfortunately plastic cannot be completely removed from a market because certain vegetables require plastic to prevent water from leaking and inconveniencing shoppers. Nonetheless, efforts can still be made to limit plastic use to a minimum. Overall, the SMFMs sustainability benefits will not be reflected in their business unless customers are made aware of their actions. Hence, we suggest they incorporate additional educational components regarding their sustainability efforts. By bundling the quality of organic produce with its environmental aspect the SMFMs will benefit from increased price margins.

A Case Study on Nestle’s Sustainability Management Practices

As the world’s leading food and drink company, Nestlé has historically encountered many reputational issues as a result of poor supply chain management. Beginning in 2009, Nestle enacted several sustainability strategies such as Nestlé’s Ecolaboration, Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program, and 4C Code of Conduct in an attempt to address these issues. While these initiatives accomplished desired results, a close analysis of their policies shows gaping holes in data reporting, sourcing visibility, and certification standards. By analyzing case studies of Starbucks and Walmart, we describe benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of implementing industry-leading standards despite higher upfront costs. Our final recommendation is for Nestle to enact a company-wide policy to adopt the Smithsonian National Zoo’s Bird-Friendly Certification with the partnership of other NGOs to ensure implementation success. We strongly believe that this strategy will provide a secured, high-quality source of coffee beans for Nestle’s future consumption as well as establish a new industry standard for coffee bean certification.

Five Threads Brewing Company: A Great Local Craft Beer Experience

The Five Threads Brewing Company is a small brewery located in Westlake California. Breweries are inherently water and energy intensive, but many have adopted sustainable practices to reduce their ecological footprint. While Five Threads pursues various environmental initiatives like reusing water to clean kettles or make the next batch of beer, as well as sending spent grain to farmers for cattle feed, there is more that they can do. Currently, the brewery has little incentive to invest in long term green infrastructure like solar panels due to the short-term nature of their lease, and their current goal of raising revenue. This along with their small size makes it harder for them to adopt practices many sustainable breweries have implemented. However, we believe Five Threads may increase profitability while simultaneously reducing their environmental impact. This includes implementing a Bring Back Your Bottle program—giving a 10% discount to customers who bring back their own bottles and thus incentivizing customers to reuse while also reducing costs for new bottle purchases, partner with a local bakery as community outreach, or reuse their bottles in interior designs to create cool backdrops and an overall atmosphere that will generate a greater social media presence.

Shaping Sustainability: J7 Surfboards and the Impacts of Sustainable Business Strategies

Our project focuses on the feasibility of establishing custom order surfboards made

from materials with reduced environmental impacts in the business model of J7

Surfboards of Santa Barbara, California. Based on a culmination of life cycle

assessments of traditional surfboards and ecoboards, economic analysis of current

surfboards produced by J7, and cross comparisons of surfboards produced by competitors –both traditional and ecoboards–our project serves to assess the

ability of J7 to introduce a ecoboard option into their custom board productions.

Through establishing this option based on their current business model and

economics, we offer a way for this local-based surfboard company to be a leader

in surf industry environmentalism within the Santa Barbara community without reducing profit margins. Our report finds that the production of sustainable

surfboards is a viable option for J7 Surfboards currently as a custom order option,

and that future implementation of a permanent ecoboard line will be feasible

with more advanced economic analysis and the popularization of sustainable surfboards.

Group 8: Alexa Garcia, Allison Candell, Kathleen Knight, Manali McCarthy, Weilly Tong

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Red Bull: is the energy drink energy efficient?

Group 6 analyzed and evaluated the current environmental strategies and made further suggestions for the company Red Bull GmbH, the makers of the Red Bull energy drink. Currently, Red Bull does fairly well in being environmentally friendly and sustainable; for example, they use locally sourced water, recyclable materials, and wall-to-wall production (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). However, they only have one production hub, which is in Austria, when they ship to 170 other countries, thereby increasing their emissions. Also, since the company is private, the only information available about their performance is information they choose to release, which could be potential greenwashing. Our group conducted a survey and found that out of the college students who responded, most preferred that the company be eco-friendly. Since college students are a target consumer (according to their can) and based on our other findings, we suggested that Red Bull greatly improve their transparency regarding their environmental practices, and that they further their strides in sustainability, emphasizing reducing their greenhouse gases. This will reflect better on their name and be better for the environment, and these will both be important in the coming years.
Group 6: Arman Tahmazyan, Taylor Ely, Mikyla Reta

UCLA Catering Services - Serving Sustainability

UCLA Catering Services and ASUCLA Catering both cater events on UCLA's campus. As such, both entities are subject to UCLA’s goal of being waste free by 2020, and have been taking steps to meet or exceed the UC Policy on Sustainable Practices. UCLA Catering uses exclusively recyclable and compostable utensils, and is working on changing their recyclable containers to compostable ones. They source much of their food from a 50 mile radius, although there is room for improvement, namely making imported canned and packaged goods in-house. They also claim to recycle or compost 99% of their waste. ASUCLA Catering utilizes electric carts to transport food, composts, and is working on switching to compostable "to-go" containers.

The biggest challenges faced by both organizations are educating employees and customers. Therefore, we recommend waste disposal training for all new-hires as well as periodic reassessments. We also recommend that ASUCLA adopt the signage and instruction materials that UCLA Catering uses (seen below), and that both organizations provide different colored bins with educational posters whenever catering an event. Finally, we recommend that both catering services, and UCLA overall, aim to obtain environmental certifications, namely the Marine Stewardship Council, the Green Seal Standard for Restaurants and Food Services, and the Real Food Campus Commitment, by continuing to switch to locally and sustainably grown foods and compostable packaging and utensils.

Group 9 - Leyla Farzaneh, Yassine Hamdouni Alami, Zachary Alter, Maxim Guzman

The Fat Vegetarian!

Practices that produce a negative impact on the environment span all across society. However, the industry with one of the largest effects on our environment is the food industry. Taking this into account, our group set out to create a report on one of Westwood's favorite eating establishments: Fat Sal's Deli. The meat industry has a massive impact upon the environment and it is no secret that Fat Sal's is famous for their meat-heavy sandwiches. One of our projects main focuses was introducing a vegetarian sandwich. Not only would this expand Fat Sal’s customer base to those with vegetarian lifestyles, but the veggie sandwiches would be cheaper to produce. Ingredients would be used from other menu items, thus limiting costs and hopefully luring some customers away from meat filled sandwiches. Another task was to address the use of plastics and disposable materials. The goal would be to introduce reusable cups, compostable utensils and recycling bins. This would cut down Fat Sal's waste disposal costs while helping preserve the environment. One of the major ramifications of these changes would be improving Fat Sal's public image – especially in the relatively environmentally friendly, college-town of Westwood.

Group 1: Hogan Fenster, Zoe Robertson, Destiny Tafoya, Vitor Takasu, and Grant Sugimura 

Home Sweet Home Summary

Home Sweet Home is a company successfully employing the use of the green bundle strategy. The company not only offers their customers the opportunity to save money, but the opportunity for the customer to do public good through their environmental strategy. Currently, the company has implemented their environmental strategy through their “Save a Tree” and “Discard and Donate” program. Through these programs, the company cuts costs by reducing the overall amount of good shipped, which leads to the reduction of carbon emissions and potentially  equivocates to the saving of three trees. With such a successful environmental strategy, one positive change could the implementation of a reusable box product such as the Recopack. Additionally, the company would benefit most from updating their website to best communicate just what Home Sweet Home can do for both the customer and the public good. The current environmental impact statistics and information regarding the “Discard and Donate” program are difficult to interpret. Large numbers and vague statements may look positive to an interested customer but the extent to what they mean is not clear. Thus, the company need do little more than better advertise and clarify their use of the green bundle strategy.

-Group 5: Kelley Brennan, Keely Watland, Ashley Arcos, Daniel Begazo

Grand Central Market: Packaging its Way to a More Sustainable Future

The Grand Central Market is a popular food destination located in Downtown Los Angeles. The Market has over 50 vendors which operate with varying levels of environmental responsibility. Given the shared nature of the Market, issues relating to the Tragedy of the Commons are prevalent there. Thus, the current sustainability strategy pursued by the Market is not enough to counterbalance the vendors who are not working toward decreasing their environmental footprint. What’s more, the Market produces a great deal of waste associated with food packaging. Therefore, we sought to pair the goal of decreasing packaging waste with providing an incentive to vendors. Our proposed strategy invites the Market to incentivize vendors to switch to environmentally responsible packaging through the use of an eco-label system, so that vendors which use sustainable packaging benefit. Additionally, we recommend that the Market increases the size of its recycling bins in order to accommodate the growing numbers of recycled packaging, and implement signage that communicates to the consumers their efforts to reduce waste.

*Source: We like L.A, Google.com. Web. 2, June 2017. http://www.welikela.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/grand-central-market-featured.jpg

Group 7: Judith Foster, Grace Reynolds, Carly York, Maria Kiejnich

BoxCamp Environmental Recommendations: Summary

BoxCamp is a UCLA startup that seeks to provide its customers with convenient and affordable storage solutions. The company was created to help college students pack, transport, and store items such as textbooks, small appliances, and clothing during the summer break.

In an email interview conducted with Keith Yoder, CEO of BoxCamp, we asked what type of environmental strategy (if any) the company was currently practicing. We learned that being more sustainable is a goal BoxCamp is interested in pursuing; however, they do not currently have a clear plan to do so. Thus, we recommend a few environmental strategies to make the business more sustainable without compromising profits. These strategies focus largely on improving the company’s packaging methods, either by switching to the use of reusable plastic bins, which have a superior life cycle analysis to corrugated cardboard, or by incentivizing customers to recycle their boxes after use so that BoxCamp can resell them. Overall, these strategies will allow the company to improve both its bottom line and environmental performance.

Group 3: Brisa Aviles, Kalei Aricayos, Andrea Mahieu, Corey Ly, and Allison Wolhart

MSC Report Summary

Our report focuses on Mediterranean Shipping Company, the second largest shipping container company in the world. MSC is a multi-billion dollar, privately family-owned provider of industry transportation and other services. This paper focuses on MSC’s shipping container sector with the following analysis: MSC’s environmental strategy including; environmental pillars and operations and recommendations for how MSC can improve, highlighted in three categories; transparency, life cycle analysis, and best industry practices. MSC’s lack of transparency and inability to answer direct questions pertaining to company strategy and data resulted in us being unable to give in-depth recommendations for their business.

By Salomé Vergne, Owen Emerson, Shelby Slaughter, Desmond Lim, Kayla Smith