The Union Market, home to Western’s food court, brings a sustainability slant to dining.
- Promoting sustainably sourced foods - Union Market purchases its coffee from Just Coffee Co-op and the microgreens used in our salad bar are grown by our horticulture students in the Horticulture Education building on campus.
- Reusable clam-shell containers for take-out and incentives for using re-usable mugs
- Near zero-waste kitchen - Western uses a pre-consumer food waste dehydrator to turn food waste into biomass that, when amended, is used by our horticulture students and others as a growing medium. In the first year of operation, the dehydrator kept 4 tons of food waste out of the landfill and produced one ton of biomass.
- Food donations to local shelters - At the end of the week, Western donates leftover food to the local Salvation Army shelter.
Did you know? A giant hood above Chops Mongolian grill in the Union Market Food Court sucks up wasted heat coming off of the grill, filters it, and uses the recaptured heat to heat the rest of the building.