Humber College
OP-8: Sustainable Dining

THE SPOT: Launched in Fall 2019, the SPOT is a unique campus dining experience at Humber College, Barrett CTI Building. Our commitment to waste reduction and using local seasonal ingredients is exemplified in chef-driven built-to-order vegetarian, vegan and meat entrees using root-to-stem techniques, featuring Humber Arb fresh produce & honey, serving ethical Propeller Coffee Co., a Toronto’s sustainable micro-roaster, with a dine in option to reduce plastic waste.

The Longos Faculty of Business at Humber supports local small business when purchasing produce and food items. i.e. Maher, Tatangelos, Portofino, Qualifirst Chef Warehouse, Seacore, Mr. Dairy, All seas, Butcher Shoppe, etc.

Birch Bark is certified organic, Indigenous-owned, Fair-Trade coffee that is SPP certified, meaning that it's grown and produced by farmers that are of Indigenous descent. Birch Bark coffee is available at all of Humber’s campus dining locations where a portion of profits go to providing clean drinking water to Indigenous communities.

Planet Promise: An annual campaign (inaugural in Nov 2021) featuring plant forward, vegan, and vegetarian recipes, as well as customer facing educational marketing to encourage guests to choose lower impact menu options as part of a broader global climate change campaign. Planet Promise is the Compass Group (Global) global commitment to reach Climate Net Zero by 2050. This includes ambitious emissions reduction targets over the next decade, which have been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), and a further commitment to be carbon neutral worldwide in its own operations (Scope 1 & 2) by 2030.

Chartwells monthly marketing programs focus on specific sustainability and wellness themes. Low Impact Meals featured in June 2021 focus on meals and food options that align with our climate reduction commitment, featuring local, plant based, flexitarian and seasonal options

Upcycles Festival Waste Reduction Week: The Antithesis Group (formerly Provision Coalition), the agency behind this first of it’s kind event, partnered with Compass Group Canada to promote both their Upcycle Fest and Upcycle Food Kit. Hosted between October 18-24 of 2021, the intention was to build awareness and gauge consumer interest in food kits / meals containing upcycled items. Chartwells at Humber donated 40 of these kits in total to students on campus to participate in a virtual Teaching Kitchen on the subject. They key messages included:
- Decreasing food waste / address food insecurity
- Building plant forward meal options
- Innovating in the field of culinary offerings

Chartwells Teaching Kitchen was open nationally to universities and colleges across Canada led by Compass Executive Chef Donna Tobia, with Provision Coalition’s Upcycled CEO, Cher Mereweather, to demonstrate how we are collaborating to bring innovative food waste solutions to our food services, and how we educate and inspire our guests.

Humber students had the chance to try out an innovative circular economy product and share feedback.

Eat Local Now: Local Hero (month of October) showcasing homegrown and seasonal foods on our campuses is important to our clients and guests, and this is a concentrated national effort in which we as individual units and as a company celebrate Canadian farmers and producers. Local Hero is a campaign that has two aspects:
- Chefs feature seasonal ingredients in a special menu, or a menu feature
- Host a local table, or display with products from the region, and marketing materials titled “Living Local” are used to help showcase the harvest season ingredients on the menu

Humber College also has a Culinary program under the Longos Faculty of Business, through which students lead sustainability in both The Humber Room and Gourmet Express:
Humber Room
- Features ocean-wise seafood
- Offers Fair-Trade Certified Coffee and Teas
- Farm to fork curriculum taught in the back of house

Gourmet Express
- Promote/Offers Fair Trade coffee/teas
- Compostable disposables
- Composting coffee grounds
- No more black containers
- No more plastic straws
- Discount for customers who bring their own cup

Chartwells offers vegan and\or vegetarian meals at every meal period and grace periods across campus in all branded and non-branded locations. They may not however always include complete protein.

In April 2022, Powered by Pulses is a campaign developed in partnership with Pulse Canada to bring pulses to the forefront as a staple plant based protein and nutrition option to traditional meat based menus. While not exclusively vegan/vegetarian, the majority of features are intended to give students an alternative to meat option. Educational signage supports the menu including what pulses are, that they are Canadian, and packed with nutrients suited to every lifestyle.

The Longos Faculty of Business program always offers one or more vegan meal options in the Humber Room and Gourmet Express.

Chartwells’ WellPower program labelling defines which menu options are vegan, low in sodium, vegetarian, etc. to help our guests select what is in line with their dietary needs and values. A fair-trade selection of coffees is available both through the Starbucks brand and Van Houtte Coffee.

We use a variety of communication methods to inform customers of good food choices through digital media, social media, posted menus, and website.

Fair-trade signage is also seen at Gourmet Express and on the Humber Room menu through Humber’s Longo Faculty of Business department.

Menu icons are available for menu boards and POS in internally operated food locations: vegan, vegetarian, and other descriptors can be added to help guests choose a food options that is aligned with their dietary, and lifestyle needs.

Webtrition: The Chartwells approach to minimizing waste begins with accurate forecasting and inventory management by our culinary team with Webtrition, a menu management tool. Our chefs use Webtrition to optimize product stocking rationalization and ordering of the right products, in the right size, at the right times. This is further supported by strategic analysis of product sizes and volumes conducted by Foodbuy (our purchasing division) in collaboration with the corporate sustainability team specifically charged with addressing packaging waste across the value chain, from what comes in our doors to what leaves.

Clear waste bin program: Kitchen food waste is any food item discarded during the food production process. The most frequent reasons for kitchen food waste are:
- Overproduction (i.e., making too much food)
- Trim waste (from cutting vegetables and fruits)
- Expired food

Reducing kitchen waste benefits both our clients and Compass Group Canada in the following ways:
- Reduces our environmental impacts at each unit.
- Helps control food costs.
- Reduces the amount of garbage to be picked up from the unit.
- Makes all associates aware of food waste and its implications for product cost (i.e., makes frontline associates part of the solution).
- Allows the chef to be aware of how much food is being wasted (e.g. through over-trimming) and provides an opportunity to train staff (e.g., on knife skills).
- Smaller storage area required for garbage bags and bins.

All associates are responsible for managing the food waste in their own areas: the chef, supervisor, or manager is responsible for ensuring that food waste is being managed properly, including tracking and documenting food waste. The chef, supervisor or manager is responsible to ensure that food waste is being managed properly, including tracking and documenting food waste.

Stop Food Waste Day: Every April, Chartwells campuses and schools across Canada to celebrate Stop Food Waste Day to teach individuals ways to reduce food wastage. Our 2019 Stop Food Waste Day campaign and has demonstrated Excellence in Execution and has been active every year since then. Whether it was posting messages and signage in unit and on social media, hosting engagement activities or executing “Root to Stem” recipes, our campuses and schools shared the message of food waste reduction and responded to the campaign in an impressive way.

Trays were removed after 2019, and menus were modified with assisted serving, which helped control portion sizes and waste.

Project Clean Plate is a food-waste awareness campaign that raises awareness and engages students to reduce waste. The campaign has three key objectives:
- To reduce food waste (including setting waste reduction goals)
- To engage students (including communication, participation, and involvement)
- To make a positive contribution to the community (e.g., supporting a local charity)

Project Clean Plate focuses on reducing post-consumer food waste (i.e., waste that has already left the kitchen and servery). Effective communication strategies to students and active student participation are critical to ensuring success and reaching campus-specific waste-reduction goals.

If the reduction goals are met, Chartwells food services on campus makes a donation to a community-based charity that feeds the hungry in our communities. Connecting the goals of Project Clean Plate to a local charity contributes to increasing participation amongst students, while also making a positive social impact. An example of Project Clean Plate and a short video on the campaign is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-3N3jrk-ek

Trays are not available on campus.

Leftover food from the Longos Faculty of Business Culinary Program is used in Humber’s recovery kitchen to make meals for Gourmet Express. Leftover food is also used to produce soups for Humber’s Ignite Soupbar. The Soupbar offers a variety of free soups at Humber College’s Noth and Lakeshore campuses. This program was created to address student food insecurities at Humber. A portion of the student produced meals are also donated to local charities in the Etobicoke and Mississauga areas.

Humber’s Gourmet Express is a food retail spot, which sells meals/products made by Culinary Program students under the guidance of expert chefs in the practical classes.

Humber via Compass works with Second Harvest’s FoodRescue.ca platform to quickly and safely donate food with speed and effectiveness that may otherwise be unused to community organizations.

As well as avoiding food waste, this partnership provides meals for people in our local communities.

The versatility of this platform allows us to select preferred donation partners, or allow for any suitable organization to claim and collect the food on a first come first serve basis. Whether it is due to a last minute catering cancelation, or a weather day business interruption, we are able to prevent good food from going to waste.

Since the launch of this platform and Humber’s participation, the value of food donates is $3,471, providing approximately 1,335 meals to the community, and resulting in the diversion of an estimated 2,018 kg of GHG’s.

Humber's primary food services provider Compass (Chartwells) and the Longos Faculty of Business (culinary program) staff and students collect cooking oil throughout the year which is then sent to be converted to fuel. Annual volumes are included in our annual waste audits.

Oil and Grease 3 Rs program: Oil and grease is collected from food service areas across campus, and stored in dedicated containers. Service is provided by Rothsay as required. 6.7 tonnes of oil and grease is projected to be recycled with our existing program, and it is estimated that 100% of the waste produced will be diverted.

In 2020, Humber implemented new waste bins across the campuses to encourage proper sorting. This involves engaging with each department and faculty individually, job shadowing cleaning staff for a day, and conducting a pilot in one of our buildings. Some Humber students are leading initiatives, and one program is using game design to approach a traditional problem in a new way.

Pre-consumer food waste is collected from kitchens in food service areas for composting off-site. The North Campus has teaching kitchens for the Hospitality, Recreation and Tourism programs that also have a composting program in place to collect pre-consumer food waste. All pre-consumer food waste is collected in designated bins and is hauled to a composting facility nearby.

Food court and food service areas collect post-consumer food waste by providing designated organics bins beside waste collection areas. Material is collected by a hauler Monday to Friday and taken to a nearby composting facility.

At Gourmet Express and Humber Room (Longos Faculty of Business), all biodegradable food waste is composted.

Low Waste Event Spaces: As of September 2021, catering served at Lakeshore Campus' G Commons and Student Welcome and Resource Centre (WEL) are have been designated Low Waste Event Spaces. This means that no disposables will be available at catered events 9n these locations.

Starting in the Fall of 2022, Humber College is making the transition from disposable containers to reusable ones at a number of our cafeterias and dining locations at our North and Lakeshore Campuses. In the effort to reduce single-use packaging waste that ends up in landfills and be more sustainable, we are introducing two programs depending on where you’re located: O2GO at North Campus and Friendlier at Lakeshore.

Developed by  OZZI, the O2GO® Reusable Food Container program is a sustainable alternative to single-use packaging. Humber is expanding the program to more food service locations at the North campus. Users can opt to have their meals served in O2GO containers at the Street Café and Staff Lounge, while meals at the Residence Café will be exclusively served on O2GO.

Friendlier is the reusable container program at Humber’s Lakeshore Campus. Meals from Lake Café and L Commons Eatery will be served in Friendlier containers. Through the program’s app, users can track the environmental and social impact they have made by participating.

Humber Room restaurant uses fine dining plates and other china.

We offer the lug-a-mug program that provides the customer with 10-20% discount on their beverage purchase at all locations on campus.

HRT also offers a discount in Gourmet Express to customers who bring their own mugs, as well as $1 coffee in the summer if it is a Gourmet Express reusable mug.