Good Food
Good Food is food and drink that is tasty, healthy, good for the environment and good for the people who make it.
Single use items
Catering outlets at the University and Students’ Association remained closed a significant proportion of 2020-21 and, when these where opened, a number of measures were taken to safeguard outlet staff and their customers to avoid cross-contamination of Covid-19. As such, availability of single use items such as cups and cutlery increased over this time.
Towards the end of the academic year, the University and Students’ Association have restored the disposable cup levy at all catering outlets. Compared to the baseline (2017-18), sale of disposable cups in September 2021 was down 62%.
This was a decrease of 35% compared to September 2020 (noting that not all catering outlets where open in September 2020, which may impact this latter figure).
Bloom cafe
For the University, one of the key highlights for this year has been the development of Bloom Café in Kings Buildings.
The University trailed a number of new initiatives at Bloom including: a wider range of reusable items; graphics to educate staff and students regarding good food at the University; introducing living plants to the space to support environmental wellbeing (in progress at time of writing).
It is hoped that Bloom will act as a test centre for sustainable initiatives which can then be rolled out more widely across the University once shown to be effective.
Planetary Menus
The University and Students’ Association have supported a student-led project (Planetary Menus) to introduce and promote a series of menus aligned with the EAT-Lancet report.
The planetary menus project ran for four weeks from September 2021, with each week focusing on a different sustainability theme (e.g. Fairtrade & ethical eating or food waste). This project supported the University’s goal to increase plant-based and vegetarian plates to at least 50% across all outlets, and is improving the understanding and awareness of such initiatives at the University.
Blog post: Serve your community by eating Planetary
Good Food policy
News: Our pledge of more veg with Peas Please
News: Five ways the University is making food more sustainable