Our sustainable mission

Catering offers the chance to address a range of sustainability issues and we actively consider a wide range of environmental and social impacts when sourcing and developing our product offering. 

While we aim to provide food that’s healthy, affordable, local, seasonal and nutritious,  — with plant-based alternatives where possible — we’re also looking to eradicate single-use packaging, minimise food waste and reduce both our energy and water consumption.

Our Sustainable Food Policy‌ provides a framework to ensure that food and drink is produced, sourced, consumed and disposed of in such a way that considers the protection of the environment, provides benefit for society and that sets high standards of animal welfare. We measure our against its implementation on an annual basis and report our progress in the University’s sustainability report. 

We have achieved the highest possible rating of three-stars in the Food Made Good standard, run by the Sustainable Restaurant Association. In 2024 we were evaluated for our sustainability performance across three main areas: sourcing, society,
and environment – and, in each, we achieved a rating of more than 80%. 

The standard takes a holistic approach that includes every aspect of what sustainability means in today’s environment, setting out practical actions to improve the sustainability of our catering and hospitality operations and future growth. The Food Made Good Standard assesses behaviour, measures action, celebrates progress and provides a roadmap towards further improvement - we are incredibly proud to have achieved a three-star rating.

Manchester Met actively supports Greater Manchester’s Plastic Free GM campaign. We have supported the campaign since 2019 by pledging, along with other university, college and hospital partners, to undertake a number of steps to eradicate avoidable single-use plastic items from our catering and hospitality services and unnecessary plastic packaging. The pledge involves that partners across Greater Manchester work together towards a shared vision of eradicating avoidable single-use plastics from catering, laboratories and stationery across Greater Manchester Universities, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Further Education Colleges.

Our Sustainable Food Policy provides a framework and associated plan that sets out the actions we must take to reduce and where possible remove plastics from our operations. Here are just some of the steps we have taken so far,

• Removed disposable plastic straws and cutlery in all catering outlets
• Removed non-recyclable black plastic food trays and replaced with recyclable cardboard containers with biodegradable lids in our hospitality offer
• Sell reusable hot drink cups in all of our outlets
• Offer a 20p discount for using a reusable cups for hot drinks, thereby discouraging the use of single-use plastic-lined disposable cups
• Sell reusable ‘Bottle Up’ water bottles to reduce the consumption of single-use plastic bottles
• Replaced plastic takeaway food boxes with boxes and packaging made from recycled non-plastic materials
• We provide students, staff and visitors with access to free drinking water in all buildings, and encourage customers to refill water bottles to reduce the consumption and associated disposal of single-use plastics.

We are committed to applying the principles of the waste hierarchy (a framework that ranks waste management options from best to worst for the environment) to our operations and to the operations of our suppliers and partners where possible. That means we must work to reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place, and where waste is created aim to reuse, recycle, recover, and lastly dispose of waste where there are no alternative options.  

Across our catering services we provide an incentive for all of our customers to use reusable cups for hot drinks, sell reusable hot drink cups in our outlets, offer reusable water bottles, and in our Brooks Food Court all customers have the choice to use reusable crockery and cutlery. 

• Drinks bottles - We offer ‘Bottle Up’ water bottles for £3.00 in Costa, Starbucks, Lowry Café, Brooks Food Court and Dalton Food Court. These bottles are made from sugar cane, reusable, and pre-filled with spring water. Customers can fill up their water bottles at the fountains located near the catering outlets. 
• Hot drinks discount - We sell reusable cups for hot drinks in all of our catering outlets and provide a great incentive for using reusable cups. You can purchase a hot drink using any reusable cup and receive a 20p discount on all hot drinks.
• We provide students, staff and visitors with access to free drinking water in all buildings, and encourage customers to refill water bottles to reduce the consumption and associated disposal of single-use plastics.

We are tackling food waste on campus through our Too Fresh To Throw initiative, a food redistribution scheme for short-dated packaged food which helps us reduce food waste on campus by selling unsold products to our customers at a discounted rate.

We try to keep our waste down as much as possible, and implement processes and systems to prevent food waste in the first place, but, in reality, not all products in our outlets are sold by their ‘use by or best before’ dates. Where food products are nearing their ‘best before’ date, we provide a low-cost ‘Too Fresh to Throw’ offer where items are discounted with stickers to ensure they are sold and not wasted.

Customers can pick up sandwiches, wraps, or pastries that are no longer able to be sold in the outlet at the end of the day. 

We are taking steps to ensure our food and drink suppliers use either no palm oil, or where it is required, that certified sustainable palm oil is used. 

Sustainable palm oil is palm oil that is produced, processed, distributed, and sold in a responsible way. This means that it is produced with minimal environmental impact and in a way that protects the rights of people and animals. 

Our Sustainable Food Policy commitment is to ultimately procure products that contain certified sustainable palm oil (where palm oil is an ingredient). We know there is still work to be done to achieve this, and are partnering with foodservice procurement and supply chain specialists and industry to address the challenges, and to select sustainable palm oil containing products. 

For more information on sustainable palm oil, visit the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

We provide students, staff and visitors with access to free drinking water in all buildings, and encourage customers to refill water bottles.

We are actively working to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics by encouraging our students and staff to refill. Water fountains are available across our campus.