Food

The sustainable food agenda has always been important at Oxford Brookes. We recognise the importance of providing healthy food. As well as the environmental, economic and social impacts surrounding food systems.

Read more about our ethos and accreditations on our dedicated food@brookes website, including being the world’s first Fairtrade University. And see refer to our Sustainable Food Strategy and Sustainable Food Action Plan for more details.

Working with partners

In partnership with catering provider Gather & Gather, we have achieved the highest available Three Star Food Made Good Sustainability Award rating from the Sustainable Restaurant Association. The Food Made Good Standard assesses our efforts in sourcing, society , and environment, demonstrating our dedication to sustainable food practices.

Key contract drivers with our partner are to promote healthy and sustainable food options at Brookes. This includes:

actively sourcing locally grown produce
promoting seasonal foods
maintaining sustainable food and animal welfare accreditations such as Fairtrade
reducing waste across the offering
delivering greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Fairtrade and much more

We are proud to be a Fairtrade University. This enables us to make a positive contribution to developing countries by:

offering better prices
providing decent working conditions
providing local sustainability and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers.

We also work closely with ‘Good Food Oxford’ and are signatories to the ‘Good Food Oxford Pledge’. We aim to catalyse actions by individuals and organisations that promote a healthy, fair, ethical and environmentally sustainable food system in and around Oxford. And we encourage our community to get involved in local projects.

Vegan and vegetarian menus

In line with the latest research we are moving away from a vegan framing approach. This means that Instead of a separate vegan catering outlet, we will embed vegan and vegetarian offerings across all our menus.

Assessing our menus

We completed Greenhouse Gas Assessment baselines of our menus and set new SMART targets to reduce our impact. We are a member of Oxford's Sustainable Palm Oil initiative and have completed a sustainable palm oil audit of our sites.