|
| |
|
Social Responsibility
|
|
World
Watch Initiative
At
Chartwells, we have established a number of programs designed to educate
students on a number of global issues and facilitate their involvement in
corrective actions. Every time the World Watch Logo appears, their is an
educational message or activity involved that allows them to become involved and
make a difference. |
|
Trayless
Days
Chartwells at Southeast Goes Trayless

For the past year, the
media has been filled with reports of a growing food crisis throughout the
world. The World Bank recently announced that 33 countries are facing food
crises. From January to April of 2008, the cost of rice alone on the
international market rose 141%. Food riots have been occurring in counties from
Haiti to Egypt.
We are doing our part to
help resolve this growing problem. One initiative we have successfully
implemented is Trayless Tuesday/Friday. One day per week in our resident dining
facility and our retail dining facility will feature service without trays. This
program is designed to help eliminate waste. This includes food and energy
waste. By removing trays, customers are less likely to take more food than they
need, reducing the amount of food that ends up in landfills while curbing energy
used to produce and distribute those goods. Plus, energy and water is also saved
by reducing the amount of dishwasher time.
The goal of this program
is to:
• Address the global food crisis
• Help reduce the University’s carbon footprint
• Promote overall healthier eating habits.
|
|
Project
Clean Plate
Each
year, hundreds of people die of starvation and malnutrition even in our own
country, despite the tremendous amount of food produced and available in our
industry. The amount of food that we waste is alarming, and is a contributing
factor to the problem. At Chartwells, it is our continuing goal to be an
industry leader and play an integral role in offering a solution to this
problem.
By taking a proactive
stance within our campus communities, we are taking the first steps towards
thinking globally and acting locally to combat hunger, reduce waste, save energy
and initiate real change. Chartwells at Southeast Missouri State University
offer the Project: Clean Plate program for students dining at Towers Café.
Project Clean Plate is designed to reduce overall food waste in all-you-can-eat
campus dining operation.
Project: Clean Plate
begins by randomly monitoring plates at the tray disposal area during select
meal periods. Results are gathered prior to the start of the program to gauge
how much waste will normally occur for the rest of the semester.
Tracking begins by
weighing and documenting the average food and beverage wasted each week. Food
waste will be weighed and the
results publicized to
students. On following weeks, students will be challenged to reduce the amount
of food wasted. If the amount of waste being reduced reaches certain benchmarks,
donations of non-perishable goods and bottled water is made by Chartwells to the
American Red Cross and Bootheel Food Bank. Students will have an opportunity to
assist the Cape Girardeau community by participating in the program and
increasing the amount of food donations simply by wasting less.
|
|
Project
Green Thumb
Chartwells’
recycling program teaches students, faculty and staff to dispose of recyclables
in appropriate receptacles to better the environment and give back to the
community and educates them on the importance of recycling. This program
currently focuses on the recycling of plastic bottles, but we hope to expand
this initiative in the near future. Some of the reasons we focus on recycling
plastic bottles include:
• Plastic bottles contribute 2 billions tons of plastic to our landfills
annually.
•
Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
• It takes
hundreds of years for plastic to degrade. This means that all plastic made with
in the last 50 years still exists in landfills and oceans.
• Plastic
bottles and other plastic debris thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000
sea creatures every year.
•
Americans use 4 million plastic bottles every hour, yet only 1 bottle out of 4
is recycled.
• When
buried, some plastic material may last for 700 years. If the Pilgrims had
six-packs, we'd still have the plastic rings from them today.
• In 1988,
we used 2 billion pounds of HDPE plastic just to make bottles for household
products. That's about the weight of 900,000 Honda Civics.
• There
are about 1,000 milk jugs and other bottles in a recycled plastic park bench.
• It takes
five recycled two-liter bottles to make enough fiberfill for one ski jacket.
• More
than 80% of Americans reuse plastic products.
Benefits of Recycling;
Creates jobs, reduces the need for landfills and incineration of solid waster,
saves energy, decreases emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate
change, by conserving resources today, recycling ensures there will be plenty
left for future generations.
|
|
Zero Trans Fat
In keeping with the 2005
Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Medical Association
Recommendations to minimize trans-fat consumption, Compass Group (which includes
Chartwells) has taken a proactive position to reduce trans-fat in our cafes and
has made the following changes.
Cooking & Fryer Oil -
Switched to using non-hydrogenated, trans-fat free canola oil and olive oil for
cooking and frying. Though we cannot
entirely eliminate trans-fats from our food (as they occur naturally in small
amounts in dairy, meat and poultry and is also created when oil is heated, or
when exposed to air) we are now using trans-fat free oils that significantly
reduces the amount of trans-fats in any fried food we serve.
Fried Foods - From a
nutrition perspective, we do not encourage eating fried food in general.
However, we do provide fried food choices as requested by many of our clients
and customers, but we are doing so in the most responsible manner by using only
trans-fat free oils.
Through
our Balanced Choices health and wellness program, Chartwells continues to
encourage practices that promote nutritional education and healthy eating, and
is committed to the fight against the use of products that contain trans-fats.
|
|
Purchasing of Antibiotic Free Meat
and Poultry
Food
service giant Compass Group North America, which includes Chartwells, is
partnered with Environmental Defense and Smithfield Foods, Inc. a
first-of-its-kind purchasing policy to curb antibiotic use in pork production.
The policy, which applies to Compass Group's U.S. operations, prohibits the
purchase of pork in which antibiotics that belong to classes of compounds
approved for use in human medicine have been used for growth promotion purposes.
It also requires suppliers to report and reduce antibiotic usage over time.
Similar requirements will apply to the company's purchase of chicken. The policy
applies to all animals that are raised by suppliers for the duration of their
lives.
"As a food service
company, the quality and safety of our food supply and customer satisfaction is
of paramount importance. We are pleased to be able to use our market position to
introduce these improvements in our supply chain. This policy makes business
sense for us, and we urge other companies to make the same commitment," said
Cheryl Queen, Vice President, Corporate Communication, Compass Group.
"We are pleased to work with Compass Group and Environmental Defense on this
important initiative," said Dennis Treacy, Vice President, Environmental,
Community and Government Affairs for Smithfield Foods, Inc. "We have and will
continue to focus our antibiotics use on ensuring the well-being of our
animals."
"We recognize that the effectiveness of human antibiotics has been compromised
and we applaud Compass and Smithfield for being the first in the conventional
pork industry to take steps to address antibiotic use in pork," said Gwen Ruta,
Director of Corporate Partnerships, Environmental Defense. "This unique
collaboration demonstrates that it is both feasible and affordable to reduce the
use of antibiotics today in order to help preserve their effectiveness for
tomorrow."
The overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture and in human medicine can cause
the drugs to become less effective. Estimates of antibiotic use in livestock
production vary, but there is general agreement that reducing overall use of
antibiotics will prolong the effectiveness of these important medicines.
Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork processor and hog producer and the
main pork supplier to Compass Group, through its hog production subsidiary
Murphy-Brown LLC, began several years ago to limit antibiotic use through
enhanced management practices and now reports the amount of feed-grade
antibiotics that are purchased per pound of product sold. Because of these
actions, Smithfield is now able to supply pork that meets the needs of Compass
North America.
Charlotte-based Compass Group, The Americas Division is the largest contract
foodservice company with $6.7 billion in revenues and more than 152,000
associates throughout the US, Canada and Latin America. Its parent company,
UK-based Compass Group PLC was ranked the 12th largest employer by Fortune
magazine in 2005. It has worldwide revenues of $21 billion with over 400,000
associates working in more than 90 countries. For more information about Compass
Group, The Americas Division, visit www.cgnad.com
Environmental Defense, a leading national nonprofit organization, represents
more than 400,000 members. Since 1967, Environmental Defense has linked science,
economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough
solutions to the most serious environmental problems.
www.environmentaldefense.org
Smithfield Foods has delivered a 26 percent average annual compounded rate of
return to investors since 1975. With annualized sales of $11 billion, Smithfield
is the leading processor and marketer of fresh pork and processed meats in the
United States, as well as the largest producer of hogs. For more information,
visit www.smithfieldfoods.com. |
|
Chartwells Fights to Protect
Threatened Fish Supply
In
February 2006, Compass Group USA announced a major policy to shift the company's
purchases away from threatened fish species and toward sustainably sourced
supplies.
As a socially conscious foodservice company, Chartwells will adopt the policy by
launch in all units nationwide in October. We believe in the importance of
contributing to and protecting our environment, and we are strongly committed to
developing policies that support sustainability.
Under the new policy Chartwells:
· Has replaced Atlantic cod,
a species which leading conservationists have recommended consumers to avoid,
with more the environmentally sound Pacific cod, Pollock and other alternatives.
· Plans to seek ways to decrease its use of shrimp and salmon that are farmed in
an unsustainable manner. These two species are extremely popular with consumers
but are of concern to environmentalists.
· Will eliminate all other 'Avoid' species from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's
Seafood Watch list, and increase its use of 'Best Choices.'
Compass Group is the largest food service company ever to introduce sustainable
seafood purchasing as policy on this scale. The policy will impact approximately
one million pounds of fish purchased annually by Compass Group.
The implementation of the
sustainable seafood program within Compass Group, including the development of
purchasing standards, internal compliance mechanisms, and chef training, is
managed by the Packard Foundation-funded Making Waves Project, a non-profit
partnership between the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Program and the
Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation.
The policy is expected to be
fully implemented within three years.
About Seafood Watch
The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program empowers seafood consumers and
businesses to make choices for healthy oceans. Seafood Watch publishes lists of
seafood that are best choices, good alternatives and species to avoid. In doing
so, the program works to transform seafood markets in ways that create
incentives for sustainable fishing and aquaculture practices.
http://www.seafoodwatch.org. |
|
Philanthropic Flex
Chartwells
and Southeast Missouri State Students teamed up to fill the appetites and warm
the spirit of those less fortunate during the Holiday Season. Students were
presented with a new option called Philanthropic Flex that allowed those with a
meal plan to donate flex dollars to purchase meals for the Salvation Army and
Safe House For Women, Inc. In its first semester of existence, the program was a
huge success, providing more than 3,000 meals for area residents utilizing those
organizations.
For the
first time, Chartwells is offering a new concept in campus dining services in
which a predetermined amount of $1.90 of flex dollars are reimbursed to students
for missed meals. This has led to students having a higher amount of flex
dollars than previous semesters. This option gives them an opportunity to flex
their meal plan muscles to strengthen the Cape Girardeau community.
|
|
More on Compass
Group Social Responsibility
|

 |