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.

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.

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

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