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Advancing Sustainability Through Student Engagement CHARTWELLS CAMPUS PROJECTS 2014-2015
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We serve more students than anyone else! Chartwells is the education sector of Compass Group Canada, the nation’s largest provider of high-quality foodservices. Chartwells operates on more than 50 higher education campuses in Canada, delivering expertise to colleges and universities both large and small.
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Engaging students on sustainability is important to us. As the President of Chartwells, and more importantly the father of two young girls who will one day become college or university students, I am deeply committed to student engagement. For us, engaging students is more than asking them to complete a survey or to “like us” on Facebook. At Chartwells, student engagement is about recognizing and embracing the power of students to initiate positive change on their campuses. It’s about reaching out directly to students to seek their ideas and to establish partnerships to bring those ideas to life. It’s about recognizing our responsibility as a food and dining services provider on college and university campuses across Canada. Simply put, we have a tremendous opportunity to actively work together with students and other key stakeholders to advance sustainable food services. Our Chartwells Campus Projects are an outcome of our commitment to student engagement. In the spring of 2014, Chartwells senior managers selected six university campuses to plan and execute sustainability-related projects that aligned with the strategic goals of each campus, while also engaging students. Each project was managed by the Chartwells Manager of Campus Engagement and Sustainability. Within these pages are the stories we have gathered and lessons we have learned through these projects. We are proud to share these stories with you as case studies of how Chartwells is leveraging the power of students to initiate positive change.
Mike Masse President of Chartwells
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> 6 Campuses across Canada > 56 Engaged Stakeholders: students, faculty, staff + onsite Chartwells management teams > 1 project per campus that ADVANCES sustainable foodservices while ENGAGING students
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Local, fresh, organically-grown… these are some of the words that can be used to describe the produce being sourced by Chartwells from the Trent Market Garden at Trent University. The Trent Market Garden is a 1.5 acre student-run community garden that grows vegetables and fruits to serve as part of campus foodservices. Within walking distance of the main campus, the Trent Market Garden is located within the Trent Sustainable Agriculture Experimental Farm. As a Chartwells Campus Project, the Trent Market Garden received seed funding from Chartwells to purchase the garden tools, seeds and other materials necessary to get crops planted and harvested. There was also funding set aside by Chartwells for a greenhouse on campus. It was decided however, that the funding be allocated to the infrastructure necessary to run the Trent Market Garden. This included installing two sea cans for storage of garden equipment, installing a potable water tank, connecting to hydro power for electricity, and installing a hand wash station. From the beginning, the Trent Market Garden was a highly collaborative project. Key stakeholders included students from Trent’s Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Program who volunteered as the garden managers, as well as Trent’s Director of Foodservices, Mark Murdoch. Highlights of the collaboration between Chartwells and the stakeholders included: • The student garden managers receiving advice on how to put together a business proposal from Compass Group Canada’s Chief Innovation Officer. • Monthly meetings established to plan and update on progress. • The student garden managers working directly with Chartwells’ onsite Executive Chef and General Manager to select the crops, establish delivery processes, invoicing and other business-related aspects of sourcing to foodservices on campus. • Sharing and supporting the student garden managers to meet the requirements of Compass Group Canada’s Campus or Community Garden Standards and Guide. • Organizing a volunteer day in July 2015 to plant crops and weed by hand. • Grand opening in September 2015 attended by senior leaders from Trent and Chartwells.
THE RESULTS • Over 10 crops planted, including tomatoes, lettuce, kale, squash, beet, eggplant, and watermelon. • Chartwells has purchased nearly 1,200 lbs. of produce from the Trent Market Garden as of November 2015. • Two videos highlighting the story behind the Trent Market Garden available on the Chartwells Canada YouTube channel https://youtu.be/MQ8BHsAM3ek and https://youtu.be/cHl605TFIQ8
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What is a beet? How do I crack an egg with one hand? What does fresh rosemary smell like? These were some of the questions raised by students at the Chartwells’ Eat-Learn-Live Community Kitchen Workshops held at the University of Toronto – Mississauga (UTM). This project began as a way for students at UTM to gain basic culinary skills, while also broadening their knowledge of ingredients and cuisine from around the world. Over time, the workshops also became a conduit to better connect students to the food served on campus and to the onsite culinary team. Chartwells worked together with UTM’s Hospitality and Retail Services department to deliver the community kitchen workshops in the following ways: • Three free workshops were held in the winter 2015 semester, attended by over 60 students, staff and faculty participants. The workshop themes were: - Healthy Eating on a Budget - Cooking in Twenty Minutes - Sweet Treats from Around the World • Students were arranged into teams and given recipe cards, aprons and hair nets to safely prepare meals after the Chartwells’ Executive Chef provided guidance. • Students were able to pick and measure the fresh ingredients they needed to prepare their dish. Students presented their dishes at the end of the cooking session, before communally enjoying a prepared meal together. • Guest speakers provided insight on workshop topics, which included Compass Group Canada’s corporate Registered Dietician. • Evaluations were held at the end of each session, which helped determine the theme for the next session.
THE RESULTS Across all three workshops, the post-workshop surveys indicated: • 80% participant satisfaction rate. • 90% of participants rated the workshops as informative and useful. • 90% of participants rated the workshops as interactive and fun. Given the overwhelmingly positive response to the Community Kitchen Workshops, the concept has now been incorporated as part of Chartwells Residential Dining Program.
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Before
After
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Initially launched in January 2012, the Borrow-A-Mug (BAM) program at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) is a studentled program to reduce the amount of waste created by single-use disposable cups on campus. The BAM program is a reusable mug sharing program that offers a sustainable alternative to disposable cups. Historically, mugs were donated and then decorated by student volunteers. Clean mugs and dirty mugs were organized on carts or crates near coffee-serving foodservice locations on campus. By late 2014, however, it was clear that perceptions related to the cleanliness of the mugs and the overall “DIY” look of the mugs themselves were impeding the BAM program from greater adoption by students and faculty on campus. With waste reduction identified as a key priority for UNBC, the revamp of the BAM program was selected as a Chartwells Campus Project for 2014-2015. Together with Chartwells, the BAM Program revamp was funded and supported by: • UNBC’s Green Fund • UNBC’s Ancillary Services Department • UNBC’s Sustainability Office • Students from the Northern Undergraduate Student Society (NUGSS) Chartwells collaborated with stakeholders on this project in the following ways: • Provided funding to purchase a set of new, branded reusable mugs, with new carts and display units. • Expanded the capacity of the BAM program by adding Chartwells-operated coffee locations on campus and accessing our commercial dishwasher to provide additional ware washing. • Constructed a “mug wall” at Tim Hortons to store and display clean mugs. • Worked with a design student to create new graphics to promote the BAM program on campus.
THE RESULTS Our long-term objective for the BAM program is to reduce waste from disposable cups on campus by 50%. The revamped BAM program was launched in September 2015, with the following results thus far: • The revamped BAM program has contributed to an 82% increase in the usage of reusable mugs at the two coffee-serving locations on campus called Degrees (September and October 2015 compared to the same period in 2014). • In September and October 2015, the BAM mugs have been used over 200 times at the Tim Hortons and the C-Store locations on campus, two locations that were not fully participating in the program over the same period in 2014. Chartwells will bring the learnings of the BAM program as best practices to support reusable mug programs at other campuses across Canada.
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“We’ve got an app for that!” This popular phrase describing the plethora of apps available to consumers today now also applies to sustainability through McGill’s very own Myko app. Developed by students and faculty at McGill, the idea for the app began in the fall of 2013 with a simple experiment led by a PhD student in the Faculty of Law. The experiment demonstrated a significant shift in the way consumers think and act towards sustainability once they are given information about the impacts of their actions in real time (or as close to it as possible). The app gets its name from the term “Myco” which is a bio-indicator in nature that signifies the health of an ecosystem. The app, in the same sense, provides an indication of how much one’s daily actions impacts the world around them. Available for free for Android and iPhone, the app works by giving users a score for their daily actions in eight categories such as food, energy, water, and transportation. Users get points for sustainable actions such as unplugging their laptop chargers and eating seasonally available produce. Chartwells first became involved in the development and launch of the Myko app during its beta-testing phase in the late fall of 2014. At that point, the students and lead faculty member behind the app, Professor Richard Janda from McGill’s Faculty of Law, needed funding and support to prepare for the campus-wide launch of the app in the fall of 2015. We believe that there is a tremendous opportunity for the app to contribute to positive change at McGill and beyond. As such, we committed to supporting the launch of the app in following ways: • Funded marketing materials (e.g. t-shirts, giveaways) for student volunteers to use during Frosh Week in September 2015 to promote the app to fellow students and increase the number of downloads. • Connected Professor Janda to Compass Group Canada’s Director of Business Transformation and Field Services to explore the opportunity for the Myko app to be added to Compass Group Canada's Innovation Lab Program. • Identified incentives, promotions and activities to further encourage students to use the app and make more sustainable food choices available in foodservice locations on campus.
THE RESULTS Our long-term objective is for foodservices on campus to become the leading and most influential contributor to the widespread adoption and usage of the Myko platform at McGill University. Working together with McGill’s Student Housing and Hospitality Services Department, we will also facilitate the testing of Myko in foodservice locations around campus. While we work toward our long-term objective, we are encouraged by the following results thus far: • As of November 2015, the Myko app has been downloaded 1,076 times; doubling in the number of downloads since before the campus-wide launch in September 2015. • Myko was recognized by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association with the 2015 Connected to the Community Award for its use of wireless technology to improve the lives of Canadians.
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Now, more than ever, students want to know what they are eating and where it comes from. The project at Concordia University revolved around a question often asked of Chartwells on campuses across Canada: “Where does the food you serve on campus come from?” Answering this critical question at Concordia University led to the creation of the “The Story of Our Food” infographic. The project began with an analysis of food and beverage purchases at Chartwells-operated locations on campus from April 2013 to May 2014. The analysis was completed by Compass Group Canada’s Sustainability & Wellness department and provided data on the following: • Food and beverage purchases by country and province of origin based on last point of manufacture. • Percentage of food and beverage purchases sourced from Quebec by category (e.g. dairy, produce). • Percentage of seafood purchased from certified sustainable sources. • Dollar spend and percentage of Fair Trade certified coffee. Such analyses on food and beverage purchases have been conducted in the past for Concordia, as well as other Chartwells-operated campuses. However, an element often missing after the completion of an analysis is sharing the information with students, staff and faculty. This is quite an important step towards increasing transparency and better connecting the campus community to the food served on campus. The project at Concordia addressed this gap by visually displaying the data on food and beverage purchases through an eye-catching infographic, which was printed on a chalk-mate surface that allows for the data to be updated year over year. To achieve this, Chartwells hired a third year student enrolled in the Fine Arts program at Concordia to design the infographic. The purchasing analysis was provided to the student, along with information describing the Chartwells culinary, frontline and management team at Concordia. After numerous consultations with the student and key stakeholders from the Hospitality department at Concordia, Chartwells proudly unveiled the infographic in April 2015.
THE RESULTS • Two 5 x 7 foot “The Story of our Food” infographics were installed as wall decals in high-traffic areas in two Chartwells-operated residence dining halls on campus. • The infographic was also shared on digital screens and on social media, using the hashtag: #FoodMapCU. This generated 19,727 Twitter impressions within the first 3 weeks of unveiling the infographic on campus.
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Transformative change towards more sustainable foodservices requires a knowledgeable, engaged and motivated culinary and management team. During the 2014-2015 academic year, the Ryerson University’s RU Eats foodservice management and culinary team experienced such a transformative change through educational sessions titled: Planting the Seeds of Sustainability. The objectives of the sessions were two-fold: • Short-term objective: increase the level of awareness, knowledge and engagement amongst the foodservice and culinary team on fundamental and emerging issues concerning food and sustainability at the Ryerson campus and beyond. • Long-term objective: Broaden the understanding of the RU Eats team on key issues, so they can in turn inspire and better engage with students through dialogue, promotions, programs, and menus. Four two-hour sessions were held between December 2014 and April 2015 in an intimate classroom setting with the RU Eats team. Each session focused on a particular topic delivered by leading industry experts, followed by open dialogue about the topic presented. Each session was video recorded by a student videographer for future training purposes. The four sessions were: • What is sustainable foodservices and what does it mean to Ryerson? • What is food security and what does it mean from a Canadian perspective? • Challenges and opportunities in local food sourcing in Ontario. • Effectively communicating and engaging with students on the goals and vision of foodservices at Ryerson University.
THE RESULTS The impact of the educational sessions on the level of awareness, knowledge and engagement on food and sustainability was evaluated through self-assessment questionnaires completed by the foodservice management and culinary team before and after the sessions. The results from the self-assessments reveal the positive impact of the sessions: • 18% improvement in participants’ self-assessed knowledge on Ryerson’s vision for food on campus. • Increase in the percentage of participants who rated themselves as possessing a “good level” of knowledge after the sessions on the following topics: - 65% increase on the topic of sustainable foodservices in general and specifically at Ryerson. - 53% increase on the topic of effectively communicating key messages to students and faculty. - 33% increase on the topic of skills/techniques to affect positive behaviour change related to sustainability amongst students and faculty. - 23% increase on the topic of food security. - 22% increase on the topic of understanding food distribution in Ontario. • 55% increase in the percentage of participants completing Compass Group Canada’s online training modules on Sustainability after the sessions.
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With a total investment of $18,574, planning and implementing the Chartwells Campus Projects for 2014-2015 has provided exciting opportunities to meet directly with students, engage them in dialogue, and form meaningful partnerships to achieve mutual sustainability goals. We have also learned many lessons along way, including: Increasing trust with students requires engaging with them throughout the duration of a project, and providing students with opportunities to get involved beyond simply being participants, including giving students decision-making authority and compensating them for their contributions. The availability of academic credits or recognition can be a powerful tool to engage a wide range of students and also aligns well with their academic pursuits. The approach we took of selecting the campuses, followed by identifying students and stakeholders, and finally selecting the projects took a great deal of time especially during the fall semester. This limited the amount of time available in the academic year to implement each project. With these learnings in mind, we unveiled a new process for the Chartwells Campus Projects for the 2015-2016 academic year.
September 2015
October 16, 2015
> Students at Chartwells-operated campuses across Canada asked to submit innovative ideas for sustainabilityrelated projects through an online submission process.
> Deadline date for submissions. > We received 23 submissions from 15 campuses across Canada.
October 28, 2015
> Public announcement of the three winning projects as selected by Chartwells senior managers. > Each project will receive $5,000 from Chartwells and the dedicated support of the Chartwells Manager of Campus Engagement and Sustainability to bring their project to life.
> Outreach to students largely through social media, digital screens, word of mouth and print materials.
THE WINNING SUBMISSIONS: • Capilano University (British Columbia)
PROJECT TITLE:
• Mount Saint Vincent University (Nova Scotia) • SAIT Polytechnic (Alberta)
PROJECT TITLE:
Aquaponics Sustainable Food Pilot.
PROJECT TITLE:
Raising Awareness on Recycling and Waste Sorting on Campus.
Healthy E.A.T.S.
Over the course of the 2015-2016 academic year, we will be working together with students to implement these projects and look forward to sharing all the stories and lessons we learn from them.
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