Green Gown Awards 2016 – Food and Drink – University of Chester – Winner

Encouraging sustainability through hospitality: the Chester way

How to engage staff, students and visitors with environmental and sustainability agendas through hospitality? This is the question that faced the University of Chester’s Hospitality and Residential Services team and a challenge they eagerly took on through the key areas of food procurement and waste, packaging, catering equipment and environmentally-friendly initiatives.

The project includes activities to reduce food waste, empower staff, students and visitors, embed sustainability into standard processes and reduce the team’s environment impact.  The Hospitality Services team is at the forefront of the University’s sustainability and environmental initiatives: these are normal considerations for the department, not an afterthought.

The department aims to enthuse customers about sustainable processes, not talk down to anyone and certainly not dictate what they should and should not do. This is about empowerment: individuals take control and choose to be green, diverting food waste from landfill and abolishing non-recyclable polystyrene boxes as they go.

Top 3 learnings

1 We learned that empowering staff to take the lead on projects works!

2 Involve students – our student partners have brilliant ideas and insight

3 Start small – one polystyrene box at a time soon amasses to 78,000.