Sustainable food

BU's catering partner Chartwells has achieved the Sustainable Restaurant Association certification three star rating in 2023. They are following sustainable food practices as part of their contract with BU:

• Use locally sourced produce through local suppliers where possible to include fruit and veg and bakery products
• Ensure that menus change with the availability of seasonal produce, with at least two major items per dish served in the season in which they are naturally abundant
• Ensure that all eggs are purchased are from a free-range production system
• Ensure that no fish is served that appears on the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) 'red list' and seek to serve MCS-certified fish, maximising the use of fish from the MCS 'fish to eat' list
• Use only 100% Red Tractor Assured meat
• Follow SCAW Approach to animal welfare.

Chartwells coffee beans are either Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance, while SUBU offer Fairtrade coffee in Dylan's Kitchen & Bar and their Ground Up Café.

Bournemouth University and our Students' Union are proud to be the only university in the UK to achieve the maximum 3 star rating within the Fairtrade Foundation/NUS Fairtrade University and College award in 2024.

Fairtrade is about better wages, working conditions, climate change resilience, and independence for farmers and workers across the world. We include Fairtrade wherever possible through selling Fairtrade products in all outlets across our campuses including an array of food items, Fairtrade clothing in the SUBU shop and seeking to purchase Fairtrade uniforms for our frontline staff such as those working in cleaning, security and catering. 

BU holds events annually for Fairtrade Fortnight. Read all about what we got up to during Fairtrade Fortnight in 2022, 2023, and 2024 in our Fairtrade Report 2022-24 (pdf, 1.3mb).

There are always opportunities to link your assignments to Fairtrade, as Events Management students found through hosting the ‘Fairtrade around the world’ event which aimed to promote the importance of Fairtrade, how it benefits the growers and also how easy it is to buy Fairtrade products from flowers to cosmetics, which are now widely available. Other students have investigated fast fashion, ethical cocoa production, palm oil and deforestation caused by beef production through the Globally Responsible Business Practice unit.

The Fairtrade Steering Group is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Fairtrade Policy and for raising awareness of Fairtrade. To see what we've been doing, you can read our Fairtrade Report 2022-24 (pdf, 1.3mb), our SMART Fairtrade Action Plan (pdf, 230kb), and the results of SUBU's most recent Ethical trade Survey.

Staff and students are welcome on this group: if you would like to join, email us at [email protected].

We work to minimise food waste throughout our operations. Our bins have separate sections for collecting food waste which is then sent for anaerobic digestion to create energy and a soil improver. 

Our team at Chartwells work hard to reduce their food waste in production. Their Winnow system tracks any waste production to highlight key areas of waste. Last year, the team found vegetable scraps formed a proportion of waste, so they have worked to both reduce the amount of scraps left over and to repurpose them in meals, for example as a base to vegetable stock. 

Did you know you can grow many fruit and vegetables from leftover scraps, like carrot tops and pineapple heads? Fill your windowsill with homegrown vegetables using some tips from the Food Revolution Network.

We use the Too Good To Go scheme to sell unsold food to help avoid it being wasted. As of May 2023 we have sold 1,227 surprise bags and saved £11,043 worth of food waste. We encourage you to sign up to the Too Good To Go app to find great deals on food from your favourite cafes, shops and restaurants. At BU it's food from the Atrium cafe in Poole House. 

We also use Olio and together we have donated 108.2kg food to the local community so far. 

As of 2024, we now have a small food waste composting unit on Talbot Campus to process some of the waste food from our catering operation in Fusion building. This will help avoid our waste travelling to an off-site facility and it will make compost for us to use on campus.

We are working hard to eliminate disposable coffee cups and, since 2020, we charge a disposable coffee cup tax of 30p across all outlets to encourage the use of reusable or returnable mugs. In 2023 we launched our innovative ‘Returnable Cup Scheme’ which has reduced the proportion of disposable cups sold from 95% to 78% between Sept 2023 and March 2024. Read more to find out how it works.

Returnable Cup Scheme

Helps us to reduce the number of takeaway cups used on-campus. What’s more, you’ll receive loyalty stamps each time you use Chartwells’ crockery, a resusable cup or take part in the Returnable Cup Scheme.

How does it work?

Join the Returnable Cup Scheme for a one-off cost of £3.95

Option 1: Keep your cup for as long as you like
Option 2: Return your cup to any Chartwells Café and pick up a clean one 
Option 3: Return your cup to any Chartwells Café and get a token for a new cup on your next visit

Each cup is professionally cleaned before it is used again.

No refund applies.

This is part of our focus on reducing single-use plastic. The Chartwells team have removed 10 key single-use plastic items including sauce packets, stirrers and takeaway containers from our catering operations. Takeaway boxes for salads are now only available on request in our Fusion building encouraging you to use crockery instead. 

We are proud to have joined the Dorset Sustainable Palm Oil Community project. We have worked with our suppliers to ensure that where palm oil is present in our on-site food, it will be sourced from accredited sustainable sources. This process is facilitated through annual supplier audits. By doing so, we know that we are helping to protect wildlife around the world from the impact of unsustainable agricultural practices.

Read more about the Dorset Sustainable Palm Oil Community.

BU actively works to support staff and students leading sustainable food projects by providing growing space on campus. You can get involved through a variety of opportunities:

• We have a polytunnel on Talbot campus which students and staff can use to grow food and plants. The Sanctuary – Heritage, Craft and Wellbeing Hub at BU currently makes use of the polytunnel to grow and store resources used in outdoor skills and crafts sessions, including flax harvesting, ancient drying, and stone carving. Read more about The Sanctuary here.
• Faculty of Science & Technology host growing space outside of Christchurch House on Talbot Campus for staff and students to tend to 
• ResLife have created community growing spaces in many of its halls of residence to support sustainable food, community action and student wellbeing. Read more about ResLife. 

With the support of the university, groups of students and staff have also found creative ways of working within the confines of the University’s city-based sites to create small food growing spaces including herb gardens and fruit tree areas. You can read more about our biodiversity work on our Sustainable Campuses page and get in touch with us at [email protected] about an opportunity.

Did you know you can grow many fruit and vegetables from leftover scraps, like carrot tops and pineapple heads? Fill your windowsill at home with homegrown vegetables using some tips from the Food Revolution Network!

Sustainable food is a fantastic area to form a project around. From calculating the carbon emissions of our menus to measuring the impact of changing our food layout, there is a lot of work we are in the process of, and we'd love to have you join in!

We've already had some excellent student projects that have improved our offering, with Chartwells and SUBU both having offered work placements to BU students. Alice Evans, a BSc Nutrition student, completed her placement with the Chartwells team to create a new selection of vegan products. After generating ideas, developing recipes and creating marketing, Alice's diverse and nutritious vegan salad boxes and 'Blitzer pots' have not only been introduced across BU but nationally!

The concept of sustainable food is also embedded in the BSc Nutrition course at BU. Students have the opportunity to visit a dairy and arable farm as well as a visit to Waitrose Ringwood in level 4 as part of their Professional Values in the Food Chain unit. This enables students to understand the food chain and what kind of inputs and outputs are involved in our food, and from this unit learning the students reflect on their role as a Professional Nutritionist.

Enriching society is a core aim of life at BU, and that counts for work with food too! BU staff and students have got involved in a variety of projects, including:

• Supporting Bournemouth and Poole to achieve Fairtrade Town status
• FoodMAPP, which is a European research project that will enable consumers to find and buy local food supplies, reducing waste and supporting sustainable purchases
• Supporting community-based food partnerships such as the Slades Farm community project
• The Nutrition Advisory Team, founded by BU graduate Claire King, and the development of a Nutri-kit to help young people take greater responsibility for their own health
• The university have provided a polytunnel on campus for our student societies to grow food and donated equipment to support growing activities
• We have planters on Talbot Campus filled with herbs which staff and students can harvest. Located behind the Student Centre
• Our catering company provides free cooking lessons for students which you can sign up to by downloading their Uni Food app.

Located on the second floor in SUBU, our Community Kitchen is open to all students and staff at BU to use throughout the year. Its main purpose is to help those who are facing difficulties during the cost-of-living crisis and are unable to afford daily essentials such as food or sanitary products. It also is a great place to go and meet people, heat up food, look through recipe books, and eat as a group.

BU students have undertaken research and found that not everyone is aware that sustainable diets are about helping the planet.

They concluded that "we need to promote greater awareness and knowledge of how changes to eating habits can go some way to helping the planet, while also offering some suggested changes that are likely to be acceptable and acted upon". For this study, researchers interviewed twenty-one mostly young adults from a range of households and with different cooking responsibilities - from cooking for everyone in the house to living with others who do all the cooking for them. The findings, published in the journal Appetite, found that many participants did not know or were very unsure of what a sustainable diet was, with some not considering the environment or the planet at all. There was particular interest in making small and easy changes - for example, eating less meat but not cutting it out completely and being prepared to pay a little bit more for it, but not significantly more.

Read more about how sustainable diets can help the planet.

Bournemouth University, with our catering partner Chartwells, have achieved a 3 star rating in the Sustainable Restaurant Association Food Made Good Sustainability standard – the highest possible rating.

The SRA works to accelerate change towards a global hospitality sector that is socially progressive and environmentally restorative, through the only worldwide sustainability accreditation tailored for the sector: the Food Made Good Standard.

Built on a 10 point framework that allows for a complete 360-degree assessment of operations, Food Made Good takes a holistic approach to sustainability, evaluating impact across pillars of Sourcing, Society and Environment.

Sourcing – From local and seasonal ingredients, to sourcing meat and fish responsibly and supporting global farmers (69%)
Society – Demonstrating responsible behaviours, such as treating staff fairly, supporting the community and feeding people well (82%)
Environment – Valuing natural resources, waste no food and making every effort to reduce, reuse and recycle (89%). 

We achieved a score of 79% overall, which is a fantastic score on our first year of being part of the scheme. We look forward to making further improvements as we progress our sustainability journey as part of BU's certified EcoCampus Environmental and Energy Management System. 

We offer opportunities for students to gain placements as food ambassadors working with our catering partner Chartwells. This year we have three students:

Ogechi - Master's student at BGB, Business and Analytics course

Anson - Master's student at Talbot, Cybersecurity course

Isabella - Master's student at BGB, Nutrition course

Ogechi and Anson have started the programme in September while Isabella was welcomed on board in November. Food ambassadors have been involved in a number of activities already, such as: The Social Kitchen, student survey on food at BGB, Uni Food Hub app pop-up, social media engagement, returnable cup scheme, hospitality food showcasing and catering user group meetings. 

If you are interested in becoming a food ambassador look out for volunteering opportunities on the SUBU volunteering page or email [email protected]. 

We have partnered with City to Sea to become the first University to be a 'Refill Campus'. This is part of our commitment to reduce single use plastic. To mark the launch we have branded 45 of our free water refill stations with brightly coloured signage to help students and staff find their nearest water refill station. 

Find out more about our 'Refill Campus' status. 

Lois Betts, Sustainability Manager at BU, said: 

“Reducing disposable plastic waste is our Eco Campus goal and by becoming a Refill Campus with City to Sea we hope to encourage students and staff to refill their water bottles across campus and play their part in reducing our environmental impact”. 

Our Procurement Team work closely with suppliers to ensure they meet strict criteria regarding the environment and the treatment of their workers as part of the tender process. We ask questions of our potential suppliers to help us choose the most environmentally friendly suppliers and take a life cycle approach wherever we can. Watch this video to find out more about the circular economy which we promote to our suppliers.

We have published a statement to show how BU and our main suppliers meet the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. You can also read more about our ethical investment policy on our People and Policies page. 

This work is led by our Sustainability Committee. If you have any questions, then do contact us at [email protected].

There are many projects you can get involved in around responsible production as part of your course. Students in the Design & Engineering department study the circular economy and actively embed it within their projects. Not only is this fantastic experience, but you can test your products with BU. In fact, a BSc Product Design student is currently designing a new range of bicycle lights for the Sustainability Team to hand out to staff and students.

If you have a project to get involved, let us know.

On 29 November 2023, Chartwells hosted the Social Kitchen - a free cookery lesson by chef John, where students had the chance to learn some helpful cookery tips, how to cook on a budget, meet other students, and of course eat some delicious food! In addition, the Social Kitchen events help to stimulate though and discussion around sustainable food consumption through choosing plant-based meals and local ingredients to use within the sessions. 

The Social Kitchen runs multiple times a term, so get in touch with the BU Sustainability Team by emailing [email protected] if you're interested!