Today is World Environment Day so we thought today would be a good time to share how we’ve been helping make campus more sustainable.

What’s been done:

In January 2018 we supported a student campaign to reduce single use plastic. We sponsored the production of 2000 reusable water bottles, which were distributed to students and staff across campus for free.

This year we’ve also pledged to remove single use plastic cups from our water dispensers, which we successfully completed as of May 2018. Although it has taken some adjustment, we’ve seen positive changes and an increase in customers using their own bottles.

During May, all non-recyclable food containers were replaced with compostable versions at Café Library, which has received largely positive feedback.

We’re working on it:

In selected outlets, we’re currently trialling paper straws in place of single use plastic straws. We’re continuing to run the trial whilst also looking into other environmentally friendly options, to ensure that whatever scheme we choose has the most impact.

Another new initiative is wooden cutlery, so if you see this around campus be sure to let us know what you think.

What’s next:

Disposable coffee cups generate a lot of questions from our customers. Currently the cups used in our outlets are compostable but unfortunately, they are non-recyclable.

Although having compostable cups is a step in the right direction, we know more could be done to grow our sustainability.

Our teams are working hard behind the scenes to find an appropriate solution for our campus cups. In the mean time we encourage you to bring your own reusable cup and get our 10p discount on a drink of your choice.

We’re proud of the changes we’ve made so far, but there’s even more that we want to explore.

If you have further feedback about any of our initiatives, or have sustainable suggestions you think we should know about then we’d love to hear from you: warwickretail@warwick.ac.uk