Food Waste
Around 15 million tonnes of food a year is wasted in the UK, 9 million tonnes of which is thrown away by various hospitality and food services.
Members of the University can reduce their waste by considering what they order for University catered events - for more information visit the Sustainable Food pages.
Hospitality and Events (within Estates and Facilities) also have a Sustainability Policy as well as a Food Waste Policy (see useful documents box).
During 2022/23 the university collected a total of 40.3 tonnes of food waste from across the campus (including Halls of Residence).
Our food waste is collected by Veolia (ES) UK Ltd and taken to their Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Trafford Park to be bulked up, before being transferred to Anaerobic Digestion (AD) facilities in Warwickshire operated by Biogen. Their treatment process can be seen in the video to the right of this page.
Food waste collections have now been rolled out to staff kitchens across all academic buildings on the Main Campus - please see here for more details.
Additional food waste bins were installed in a number of buildings in the autumn of 2024 for students/visitors/staff to use - see here for details - Food waste roll out Autumn 2024
The Student's Union introduced a Community fridge in January 2023 stocked with surplus food from University and Students’ Union outlets, giving those in need a variety of options like sandwiches, wraps and salads, depending on what’s leftover - see here.
