The UK wastes over a tonne of food a year per person, or around 1/3 of our food, and food makes up around 15% of one Scottish university’s carbon footprint. We’ll work with the People and Planet group’s Going Greener campaign to reduce food waste, hold “Love Food Hate Waste” events working with Zero Waste Scotland, cookery workshops, produce easy cooking guides, & attend university events to promote less food waste.

Within our community of 8,200, wasting an estimated 9,000t of food a year, we plan to save 1,000kg per year over three years, this will save 3,000kg of new food being purchased, and 3,000kg of food being land-filled, as all food waste within the community at present goes to landfill.

A key partner will be the Healthy Universities group which aims to improve the mental and physical health of the community. Staff and students can often suffer stress and, due to the sedentary nature of their daily live, be unfit. The project will complement and consolidate the work of Healthy Universities and provide support to the community to both improve their lives and reduce the carbon involved around their diets and how they travel. We will work especially closely to reduce food waste with established food groups such as Climate Friendly Food, Nourish Scotland and the Fife Diet, as well as HWU’s own Hospitality services department. Our work will look at how we can save carbon by eating less meat and more vegetables and fruit, eating less processed food, and using left-overs. We will continue to learn from groups such as Transition Edinburgh University and Queen Margaret University who both already run food initiatives and link to non-university community groups delivering similar work.