Food

Our Habitat Café has made great strides provide sustainable food choices and ways to serve those tasty dishes. During your stay you also can visit a grocery store and take advantage of all the local food choices Vancouver Island has to offer. You may have traveled far to be here but your food doesn’t have to. Here are a few ways you can make smart food choices:

What we’re doing

• Currently, 10% of total food expenditures in Habitat Café are towards local food, 5% is spent on food that is both local and certified organic, and approximately $25,000 is spent annually on Fair Trade Certified coffee.
• Habitat Café recently received certification with the Greentable network; the only food establishment on Vancouver Island to obtain certification. The Greentable network helps guide food establishments to become more sustainable by encouraging the use of services and products that are beneficial to the local economy, use more eco-friendly processes, incorporate water and energy conservation where applicable, and reduce packaging and food waste.

What you can do

• Buy locally and seasonally grown fruit and vegetables. Many are available in nearby grocery stores.
• It’s all about balance in your decision making: organically grown or local food versus imported foods, and their countries of origin. You’ll find a lot of options here in Victoria, not only produce but sustainably-harvested seafoods and Fair Trade Certified coffee. 
• Use reusable containers if you are bringing your own meals. A microwave can be found just outside of Habitat Café, and they are also on all floors of the Learning and Innovation Centre where you can store your lunch in the fridges as well.
• Bring your own grocery bags when shopping. You’ll find that several local grocery stores do not provide plastic bags anymore but they do sell reusable cloth bags at a low cost.
• Plant your own vegetable garden, or a kitchen shelf herb planter. Join the Royal Roads Community Garden.

Links:

Island Farm Fresh

West Shore Harvest