This area is to inform all of our customers on what the Student Services Company is doing with regard to a sustainable approach to our various services in all food outlets – the Main Food Court (including the Snack Bar and Costa Coffee), the Bistro, Staff Room and the Quikpick Nexus Market. This also applies to our main Quikpick Shop, although on a slightly lesser basis.

In 2018/19 we introduced recyclable cups to all of our catering and retail outlets within MTU. As of October 2019 we will be broadening this. All cups are now compostable, not recyclable. In addition almost all of our range of previously “disposable” products – stirrers, deli containers, disposable plates, napkins, cutlery – are now all fully compostable. So this means that most items from our delis and catering areas which previously was waste is now fully certified compostable, brown bin compliant. There is a small amount of plastic spoons etc in place but these are almost now phased out, so bear with us. Another exception at the moment is Costa Coffee – they have recyclable-only cups and lids, but they are working urgently on providing compostable products to simply the process.

MTU has put the compostable bins in place in all areas of the college and we have added to the number of recycling points in the main East Atrium. So we encourage all of customers, both students and staff to adopt a new approach towards waste, to bring their plates, cutlery and waste to the recycle points and recycle appropriately – using the trays racks provided and the appropriate bins. Please note all common areas – East/West Atrium, Nexus space, Student Centre Nexus space and Common Room and all classrooms and corridors – are self-clearing areas. Please help us and clean up after yourself.   

This is the next step in our approach towards a more environmentally friendly way of running the catering and retail services here in MTU. We will continue to look at other aspects of our business over the next year engaging with student environmental/energy groups, Students Union and other MTU stakeholders to develop an environmentally sustainable approach to more aspects of our business. Please come back to me directly if there are other common sense steps we can make and we will endeavour to do them.