Sustainable Food at Coventry University

At Coventry University we believe that the food we supply should be delicious and high quality with sustainability at the heart of every meal we serve.

We work in partnership with catering providers at all our locations to enhance sustainability throughout the whole life cycle of the catering services we provide; from sourcing, preparing, serving, through to waste food and packaging. This is a key area in our tender processes, ensuring our contractors share our ethos to embed sustainability throughout all of our catering activities.

Food has a unique contribution to make to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with the potential to impact on most of the goals; zero hunger, health, wellbeing and life on land being a few.

Within Coventry, the Coventry Food Charter seeks to address food poverty and sustainable local production. The Charter has been developed by Coventry University research teams, in partnership with local charities and organisations within the city. Our in-house catering can also support the charter

Edible Garden

Our edible garden located in the centre of campus is open for all to engage with. Students, staff and the community share the space to plant, grow and pick vegetables, herbs and fruit. A green, amber and red flag system is in operation to indicate when each bed is likely to be ready, and a noticeboard in the edible garden indicates what is planted throughout the edible garden.

Plants being grown during 2024 at the edible garden include many that we have successfully grown before and are firm favourites with the people who use the garden. These include, brassicas, root crops such as carrot, beetroot etc. French climbing and runner beans on frames and climbing squash. Also, to be found is broad beans, courgettes, lettuce, tomatoes, aubergine and radish amongst many others. For the first time this year we are growing a small selection of potatoes and utilising a system of growing known as “the three sisters” a native American system that incorporates companion planting, using sweetcorn, climbing beans and squash as the “sisters”. The corn is used as supports for the beans, the beans “fix” nitrogen in the ground and the large leaves of the squash provide shade and help retain moisture.

2024 saw the installation of a new herb garden within the edible campus. Replacing the existing, tired herb garden, the new one was designed and created by the in-house team. Consisting of four raised beds, to make harvesting easier and a path that allows you to navigate through the garden, the focal point is the birdbath positioned right at the centre. A selection of culinary plants has been chosen, all labelled to make picking easier for the harvester. The herb garden has been designed to incorporate the adjacent pergola and its planting troughs.

The long border has been designed and planted with the aim to give a fiery late season display. With a backdrop of canna and sunflower, supported mid border by dahlia, cosmos, zinnia, tithonia and tagetes, and at the front with nasturtiums and marigolds, come August and September the border should be ablaze with a sunset of colours. The plants have been chosen to be pollinator-friendly with single open flowers. The border also supports trailing plants set on hand made climbing supports using locally sourced material, these plants include sweet pea, canary creeper and mina lobata and should not only give beautiful colour but also a heady scent. A new bug hotel was installed at the far end of the border to give a home to important invertebrate life and also provide a visually attractive feature bookending the border.

Sourcing

Coventry University is a two star Fairtrade University, this accreditation is awarded to us by the Fairtrade Foundation for working to raise awareness with our students of the issues of ethical and sustainable consumption, and increasing the availability of Fairtrade products in our outlets, including tea and coffee. Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world.

In addition, we support reduced impact food by providing meat free and vegan options in all our main catering outlets.

All fish is Marine Stewardship Council approved to prevent un-sustainable fishing practices.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Recycling is available for plastic bottles and coffee cups on campus. Not producing this waste in the first place is more sustainable and we do promote the avoidance of single use plastics and coffee cups through sales and campaigns to promote using refillable containers. Discounts for reusable coffee cups are available in all our outlets. You can also fill up water bottles for free at the Hub ‘hydration station’, any of our catering outlets or water fountains on campus.

View the location of all water fountains on campus.

Food waste is recycled from our catering outlets producing compost and energy and we also work with the Trusell Trust to donate packaged food to support local food banks.

We encourage health and sustainable food and choices on campus through regular social media updates, events and promotional activities.

Read our Sustainable Food Policy Statement, Fairtrade Policy and Landscape and Management Plan.