Sometimes we get to sit down with one of the departments on campus to request something and we are just blown away. When SGA Secretary of Sustainability John Avery and I sat down with Campus Recycling and Chartwells Food Service to talk about local foods in UNC Charlotte dining, we had the opportunity to have one of those meetings.
Chartwells and Compass Group (their parent company) are truly several steps ahead of us. John had been looking at how other schools incorporate local food in their campus menus and he went to several farmers markets to get names of vendors that we could call on to set up a meeting with Chartwells brokered by us to encourage cooperation. However, Chartwells already has been using only cage-free organic eggs, sustainable fish and local/organic vegetables in their menus… they just haven’t been advertising it. And that is the only recommendation that we could make as SGA, advertise it! Now there will be “organic only” or “environmentally conscious” items in university retail locations, like grass fed beef burgers at Coyote Joe’s… or something like that. But Chartwells also wants to do more like utilizing their oil in the UNC Charlotte motor fleet and new composting options. SGA will look forward facilitating more between all of the stakeholders on campus who can implement a responsible relationship with the environment.
