Food on Campus has focused its efforts on tackling food waste throughout its services. We have partnered with the Environment Team under the banner of the c-change campaign (the university’s award-winning environmental behaviour change campaign), to reduce food waste and ensure that all food waste produced in our outlets is processed by anaerobic digestion; Defra’s preferred treatment option.
The University Strategy, Practical Wisdom:Brighton 2025, has sustainability as one of its 4 core values, where it states: “sustainability will be highly valued, underpinning the decisions we make and the activities we do, now and in the future”.
Processing food waste
Since August 2014 all university food waste has been sent for Anaerobic Digestion, the most sustainable option for processing food waste (according to Defra), rather than being combusted to create biofuel as it was previously.
Raising awareness of Food Waste
Food Hub Production Waste
In our Food Hubs the menus have been carefully designed so that production is either batch cooked or cooked to order. This helps minimise any food waste from the kitchen. Where possible we source prepared vegetables from our local supplier who is then able to compost peelings to be used on their farm. Any food preparation waste that cannot be utilised on the menu is separated and sent for anaerobic digestion. We plan the portion size of the meals to ensure that plate waste is kept to a minimum, raising awareness that any plate waste to be left on the plate so that we can separate and add to food waste collection. Used oil from our fryers is collected for recycling and used for bio-diesel.
Book and Bean Cafe
The ordering of food and beverages in the Book and Bean cafes is carefully managed to ensure that there is very limited waste from the café service. The coffee grounds from all our cafes is separated and collected to be recycled into fuel pellets to power bio-mass boilers heating buildings.
Getting feedback from customers
Our Food on Campus team encourages feedback from our customers on all aspects of sustainability and food waste including plate waste, use of disposables, plastic bottles etc.
Banners
Large pop-up c-change food waste banners were placed at a key location in each restaurant, with an environmental message highlighting the scale of food wasted in the UK, and the energy, water and resources which go into the production of this food.
