The Facilities Operations office at the School of Medicine has started a new tradition of celebrating Green Monday with an office lunch! The office members were inspired to participate in Green Monday because of their personal dedication to making sustainable choices and because it fits in with the culture created from being a certified Green Office. For the past several months, the office has hosted a vegetarian lunch available to all office members to promote the Green Monday principles of reducing the amount of meat they consume for at least one day per week. The office members work together to develop a menu of vegetarian dishes that can be prepared with minimal work in the office break room. They also invested in a set of reusable plates and cutlery to minimize the waste generated during the lunches!
Recent menu items have included Mexican style quinoa and bean burrito bowls, slow-cooker roasted sweet potatoes with ginger and orange glaze, sandwiches using bread from the WUSM Farmer’s Market, and crock-pot vegetarian lasagna. The lunches have been so delicious and successful that the office has been inspired to create a Green Monday Cookbook and they are requesting recipe submissions to fill the cookbook with recipes for dishes that require very little prep work and can be completely cooked in a typical office break room. To submit a recipe for the cookbook, please email your recipe to the School of Medicine Sustainability Coordinator, Alicia Hubert aliciahubert@wustl.edu, with “Green Monday Recipe” in the subject line.
These Green Monday lunches and the acquisition of reusable dishes are perfect examples of innovations to gain bonus points on your Green Office checklist! The checklist represents the great majority of steps an office can take to go green, but there are always unique innovations that each office can add beyond the standard checklist and further enhance their Green Office certification.
Interested in learning more about how the food we eat affects climate change? This fun and interactive NY Times article will answer all your questions about the inextricable links between climate and food.
Taco Tuesday was the theme of the last Green Monday lunch!