Let’s say you’re a food service provider like Sodexo (bear with me). In the name of sustainability, you remove trays from a university dining hall. Then you save about $25K through avoided food waste and water/energy use.
Should you:
a.) Apply those savings to next year’s meal plan fees?
b.) Donate the savings to a local food bank?
c.) Serve more beef, the food with a gigantic carbon footprint (via steak night and French dip sandwiches)?
Unless they forgot the adjectives ‘local’ or ‘grass-fed’ in the description of the steak served at Whitworth University, I wouldn’t choose ‘c.’
I’m not usually such a wet blanket (I just play one on the Web), and I do eat beef. But this just seems like the wrong move, given Sodexo’s environmental posturing and talk of sustainability. It’s like giving up gained ground.
It’s a great that Sodexo has removed trays at Whitworth. I just think they should keep moving in that direction.
And I should point out that the Sodexo Foundation does some wonderful things, (including fund one of my favorites, The Campus Kitchens Project). I’d just rather see them divert the saved money to that cause.
2 Comments