Greening Operations: Food
Food and drink is responsible for 26% of the total Burnaby Campus Ecological Footprint, and our top three contributors are brand name liquids (juice, pop, bottled water), meat, and milk products.
Chartwells supplies BCIT with most food services and catering on-campus. Chartwells states that 90% of its food products on-campus are produced in Canada, which reduces transport emissions. In Fall 2008, Chartwells committed to provide Canadian, and where possible, provincially grown, cucumbers and tomatoes year-round, and other year-round produce will be added in 2009.
Local, low-packaging, and unprocessed foods are eco-friendly, but production of food products can also be engineered to be less harmful. For example, Chartwell’s ketchup is in bulk dispensers, and is also “eco-friendly” because:
- Water used in processing is re-used up to 10 times in the factory.
- Use of natural gas generators provides a net supply of electricity to the public power grid.
- Pollution and waste reduction efforts met a stringent Environmental Management System, aligned with ISO 14001.
- Tomatoes used are grown within 100 km of the plant in Ontario.
As of September 2007, BCIT and Chartwells only use "Free Run" or "Free Range" eggs from "Cage-Free" hens, thereby promoting humane animal treatment and more sustainable farming. Chartwells will also offer Fair Trade coffee in 2008.
Chartwells is the founding national food service partner with the Ocean Wise program, which helps people make environmentally friendly seafood choices. These choices are important because an estimated 90% of all large, predatory fish are already gone from the world's oceans, and a recent scientific study predicted a worldwide fisheries collapse by 2048. In 2008, Chartwells will not offer Atlantic cod, which is unsustainable due to population, or harvesting methods. Atlantic cod will be replaced by more sustainably fished Alaskan Pollock.
Composting and recycling at BCIT also help reduce the environmental impact of our eating habits on-campus.