Plantworks

A plate of vegan foodLaunched in April 2019 on the South Kensington Campus, Plantworks is Imperial’s first entirely plant-based and vegan catering outlet. Plantworks features a bespoke and fresh menu of plant-based foods and drinks, encouraging staff and students to choose a healthier option at lunchtime and make their diet more sustainable for the planet.

By 2024, we’ll have increased the plant-based alternatives in our overall catering offer by at least 50%.

Drink, Refill, Repeat

850,000 plastic cups saved in 2018–19The Drink, Refill, Repeat campaign, a collaboration between Campus Services and Greening Imperial, encourages students and staff to transition from disposable drinks bottles and toward reusable containers.

To support this, we have introduced new water fountains across our campuses and removed plastic cups from water stations, saving approximately 850,000 plastic cups per year.

We’ve introduced an innovative MiCup initiative, where customers can pay a deposit for a reusable cup for takeaway drinks – customers return the cups to outlets where they are cleaned for reuse by other customers.

We’re also addressing disposables with respect to food: we only offer reusable plates and cutlery at our eat-in outlets and offer wooden cutlery instead of plastic when disposables are needed. We’re reducing the number of takeaway containers by rewarding customers with attractive discounts for bringing their own reusable ones. 

Sustainable Food & Drink Policy

The final policy was published in September 2022, now available on our Catering pages.

This policy guides the menus we develop, how we procure our food and equipment and how we increase awareness on how what we eat impacts the environment. 

Internal monitoring and external validation

We are increasing both efforts to ensure accountability. We are now monitoring the amount of fruit and vegetables we purchase under Entry Level Stewardship, the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme, the LEAF-Marque certification, and the Organic certification scheme. We will also increase the proportion of produce procured under these schemes over time.

Suppliers

We also believe in championing sustainable suppliers wherever feasible. We have introduced Real Wrap Co as a new sandwich supplier - the first food-to-go manufacturer to achieve carbon negative certification.  

Investing in infrastructure

Through our new installation of a new filtering system for cooking oil, the university will save around 16,000 litres of cooking oil a year, reducing consumption by 50%.