West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum will present a luncheon program on local and sustainable food purchasing for businesses and institutions on Monday, November 10 at Metro Health Conference Center in Wyoming from 12 to 2 pm. Presented by Unidine and Metro Health.
The meeting will feature an introduction to local and sustainable food purchasing for business and institutions with lessons for health care, education, food service vendors and any business that buys or sells food.
Learn about the Cultivate Michigan campaign, the new Michigan Farm to Institutions Network and other efforts to improve connections between Michigan institutions and farmers, distributors and other food vendors. Metro Health food services personnel and consultant Key Green Solutions will discuss how the health care system is progressing toward its sustainable and local food goals.
Featured speakers include Alison Sutter, Senior Sustainability Consultant for Key Green Solutions, Metro Health Hospital Executive Chef Ryan Reynolds, and Hillary Bisnett, Healthy Food in Health Care Director for the Ecology Center.
Sutter is an expert in sustainable healthcare and passionate about helping organizations increase profitability while decreasing environmental and human health impacts. As Key Green Solutions’ Senior Sustainability Consultant, she utilizes her analytical and managerial skills to help hospitals achieve their sustainability goals and objectives in sustainable program development, operations, food programs, education, and purchasing.
Bisnett is the Healthy Food in Health Care Program Director for the Ecology Center, an environmental non-profit working for a safe environment where people live, work and play. She has formalized commitments from more than forty hospitals across the state to source local, sustainable foods and is the Co-lead of the Michigan Farm to Institution Network and its campaign Cultivate Michigan. She is also a Michigan Organizer for the international coalition Health Care Without Harm and leads their national procurement efforts. Prior to joining the Ecology Center, Bisnett consulted on various projects including management of hospital’s farmers market and farm-to-hospital programs.
Cultivate Michigan is designed to help ramp up Farm to Institution programs and track progress. It is a campaign of the Michigan Farm to Institution Network, a group of practitioners, supporters and advocates all sharing common goals to help Farm to Institution programs grow. The network is a statewide forum for learning and sharing that uses shared capacity to overcome the challenges of getting more Michigan food into institutions.
Source: West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum