Sustainability 

Playing our part

• Lecturers from our Birmingham College of Food are key advisers on the Birmingham Food System Strategy being launched by the Food System Team at the Department of Public Health for Birmingham City Council.
• By partnering with a local company, all of our campus waste is either separated for recycling or treated and processed into energy to assist in providing electricity to around 30,000 local homes.
• We hold and support university and community sustainability drives including Brum Goes Green Week and our own sustainability fairs.
• We provide plant-based compostable cutlery in our take-out eateries and provide students with incentives and discounts for using their own reusable drink cups to help avoid single use items.
• We promote sustainable campaigns from organisations such as Save Soil with our students through our weekly news bulletins.
• We are working with our suppliers to ensure the goods and services we source have the smallest carbon footprint.
• We have started to provide training on sustainability in a higher education environment to inform our sustainability practices.

Student trips: Cotswolds sustainable demo farm

To support their Food Manufacture assignments and dissertations, our Food and Nutrition students visited the 107-acre Honeydale demonstration farm in the Cotswolds, an educational farm built around going back to basics with farming and educating the public on sustainability, the environment, the importance of biodiversity in soil and micro farming to feed local communities.

Hearing from the Head of Sustainable Farming about how Brexit and the war in Ukraine are affecting farmers and food supplies, students looked at different wheats and growing them sustainably and how to make honey without harming bees. They also visited the micro dairy, orchards, greenhouses and local veg box growers.