Building on the decade-long work of Campus Services (Hospitality, Retail, Events and ResLife Team) to reduce the environmental impact of food provision on campus, our Sustainable Food Commitment broadens our focus from primarily waste and fair trade to a whole-system approach, re-focussing our efforts on those activities with the largest climate impacts.

We’ve taken expert advice from University of Bath academics, students, and the Climate Action Team. This has led us to focus on the five key areas detailed below which our research shows will lead to the largest immediate carbon reductions. We are committed to achieving results and have:

• produced a detailed action plan of how we will work towards these commitments across hospitality, SU and retail.
  
• established a Sustainable Food Commitment working group with representatives from Campus Services, the SU, Climate Action, Procurement, People and Planet and Sustainable Food VIP group. The group will meet quarterly to discuss the targets and review progress.
  
• committed to report on the SFC annually.

Sourcing food locally avoids the emissions from the trucks, trains, ships, and planes used to transport it from further afield whilst focussing on foods that are in season can avoid the need to import it, and the use of large quantities of energy to grow it through artificial heating and lighting. There are trade-offs between sourcing locally and looking at where food is in season, and it can sometimes be lower carbon to use a supplier further away - for example during winter it is less carbon intensive to import tomatoes from Spain instead of growing them in the UK.  

We therefore understand it can’t be one rule for every supplier or food item, and we will consider the end-to-end carbon emissions of the produce we use.

The University of Cambridge Catering Service lowered its land footprint by over a quarter and its carbon footprint by over one-third – while simultaneously increasing sales and profit though making similar changes (4).

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 31% of monitored fish stocks are already being over-exploited, while another 50% are fully exploited (2).

Around one third of food in the world is wasted every year, most often at the end of the supply chain, driven by excessive portion sizes, and wasteful sales practices (3).

Packaging plays an important role in protecting food as it moves through the supply chain, helping to reduce food waste and its climate impact, but it also has negative environmental impacts.

It is estimated that 2025 million takeaway containers are used every year in the EU, and recycling half of these could save the equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions generated annually by 55,000 cars (5).

Reducing meat consumption is by far the single largest action we can take to reduce our carbon footprint. Non-ruminant meats emit 85% less GHG’s and use 60% less water and 85% less farmland. This increases to 95%, 85%, and 95% respectively when removing meat altogether (1).