Green Gown Awards 2014 - Food and Drink - University of Gloucestershire - Finalist

Catering with a conscience

BaxterStorey have a duty to students and staff to continuously improve and build upon the level of sustainability demonstrated at the University of Gloucestershire’s (UoG) catering operation. It has had to work tirelessly over the past 18 months to “raise the bar” in its sustainability practices in order to exceed University guidelines, tackle ethical and procurement issues, extend local sustainability chains of good practice, support health and wellbeing, and continue to educate customers, develop its staff and demonstrate innovation within the business.

They managed the process by listing its strategy under key objectives: Ethical Food, Local Suppliers, Wellbeing and Diversity, Waste Management, Education and communications as well as the benefits of these to BaxterStorey as caterers.

BaxterStorey’s catering with a conscience project has been a great success for both the company and of course for UoG. It believes that all of the hard work that has been implemented represents a distinctive and original approach to its catering offer at UoG and that most importantly it demonstrates its willingness to evolve and keep pushing forward, making the project a lifelong one.

Top 3 learnings

1 Implementing a waste management programme is paramount to providing a better sustainable catering service
2 Customers become much more engaged in what you do as a caterer and demonstrate a keen interest in the provenance of all of your locally sourced products
3 A robust sustainability policy supports an organisation greatly when applying for their Food for Life accreditation care of the Soil Association.