The college’s food service contractor, Bon Appétit, minimizes the carbon footprint of the foods they purchase by implementing the following initiatives:
- Buying only bottled and carbonated water produced in the continental United States.
- Reducing the purchase of beef and cheese products by 10%.
- Limiting the purchase of bananas, and serving as much locally grown fruit as possible.
- Purchasing protein items only from the continental United States, Canada, or Mexico.
- Purchasing eggs, poultry, beef, fruit, honey, and produce locally when in season.
- Working with all suppliers to obtain produce grown as close to Wheaton as possible. The target for locally grown food is 23%.
- Working with suppliers to limit the number of deliveries per week.
- Participating in an annual “Eat Local Challenge,” and for one day serving only food which is grown or produced within a 150 mile radius of the college.
- Consolidating deliveries to reduce carbon emissions of suppliers.
- Purchasing environmentally friendly paper products.
Other Food Services initiatives include:
- Offering reusable to-go containers to faculty and staff. Participants pay a one-time free of $5, which allows them to pick up a clean container each time they drop off the used one.
- Bon Appetit, A Rocha, and Plowshares sponsored “Food, Sustainability, and Farmworker Rights,” an lecture by Bon Appetit representative Dayna Burtness, 18 February 2010.
- Providing food-waste demonstration at the tray-return area.
- Conducting an intensive recycling program of all applicable paper products.
- Serving only hormone free milk, chicken which is free of antibiotics or hormones, and fresh natural ground chuck hamburgers.
- Serving only seafood on the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch approved species list.
- Recycling water in the dish washing system.
The department of Environmental Studies awarded Bon Appétit the 2009 John Muir Award for Exemplary Leadership Toward the Care of Creation.