Humber is becoming a greener campus and everyone is participating! Humber Sustainability Highlights feature people and departments around the College integrating sustainable practices. In recognition of World Vegetarian Day on October 1st, this month calls attention to Chartwells’ sustainable initiatives.

Ashlee Collins, General Manager for Humber’s Food Services, has a lot planned for the upcoming school year.

“Our goal is to increase local food purchases, bring in the Fairtrade coffee and educate our students, community and staff to understand what sustainability means to Humber. To bring all of that together, we have to focus on telling the good story of what we’re doing on campus,” says Collins.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of Chartwells’ initiatives – what is Chartwells?

Since 1997, Chartwells has provided food services at Humber’s North and Lakeshore campuses and Guelph-Humber University. At Humber, they serve guest traffic of 2.7 million per year and with 16 outlets, Chartwells aims to run their food operations with sustainability in mind.

We sat down with Collins and gathered information on the sustainable actions Chartwells is doing.

• Staff members are trained to use organic recycling in the kitchens to make sure food waste is always composted. If there is an overstock of an item, then they try to find another use for it instead of throwing it away.
• Chartwells has a partnership with Second Harvest which is a charity that picks up and delivers the extra food to local community agencies.
• The lug-a-mug program promotes waste reduction by offering customers a discount for bringing their own mug.
• Fairtrade coffee, tea and chocolates are available at Staff Lounge, Java Jazz and Media Buzz.
• Subway outlets no longer give out plastic bags for their sandwiches unless a customer specifically asks for one.
• Chartwells only offers exclusively cage-free eggs.

Efforts are also made to purchase sustainably-sourced food. Last academic year, Chartwells bought…

• 100% Canadian beef
• 90% of seafood from sustainable sources
• 80% of poultry and pork from Ontario
• 36% of all produce purchases come from Ontario and 25% are from the U.S.
• 12% of Fairtrade coffee

Chartwells also offers well balanced meal options, in other words, food that has low sodium, low calorie count, minimal sugars and no trans-fat.

“For September, we’re launching new icons to help customers identify what’s halal, vegan, gluten-free, sustainable seafood, made from scratch, local, whole grain and vegetarian, so people know exactly what they’re eating,” says Collins.

To keep up to date on more sustainable initiatives, nutritional information and dining locations check out Chartwells’ website!