What Does Sustainability look like with Compass at Northwestern?
Sustainability is at the heart of Northwestern so when Compass came to campus, they reflected that dedication in our operations. Our Sustainability Manager, Sarah Levesque, oversees all sustainability projects on campus from sourcing to correctly sorting waste and everything in between. While the sustainability team is always juggling multiple projects, we have a few main goals. Our major goal is the reduction of unnecessary waste, energy, and harmful toxins.
Currently, a lot of our work is focused on ensuring that the produce we are purchasing is sustainable and ethical and creating a tracking system to reduce our waste. The Real Food Challenge provides us with tools necessary to evaluate which food we purchase is ‘real food’ and what percentage that makes up of our food operating budget. Vivian, our Real Food Intern, evaluates where we can improve and researches new farms to partner with. At the same time we are working to make sure that the food we are serving is not going to waste. Through a tracking system we quantify the amount of production waste and overproduction waste are created by each station in every cafeteria. We also calculate the amount of out of date produce and student plate waste at each cafeteria. To reduce the food waste in each of these categories we give weekly and monthly waste reports to the different chefs so they can alter their menus and production accordingly. In practice this could look like utilizing potato peels as broth, or cutting down the amount of chocolate cake that is made because there is often a lot left over, or changing how often a certain ingredient is ordered and used in recipes because the kitchen does not go through it before its expiration date.
At the same time, none of these enterprises would prove useful without our educational outreach programs. Some of our previous programs included the Norris local food markets and the 21 day plant forward diet challenge. We want to help the Northwestern community understand the importance of sustainability and how they can help in making Northwestern and the world more sustainable. As always, if you have more ideas of how Compass can be more sustainable please contact us!
Olivia Barton
Sustainability Intern
Junior, Social Policy Major