Ethical Food and Fairtrade Fortnight - Exploring our Carbon & Water 'Footprints'

3rd Mar 2022 1pm - 2pm

This activity takes place online

The university recognises the environmental footprint of the food the world needs. It accounts for over a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of global freshwater withdrawals. To help us respond to this it participated in the EU funded SU-Eatable LIFE project, a collaboration to help caterers and consumers better understand the environmental impact of their diets.

SU-Eatable in the UK is delivered by the Sustainable Restaurants Association and worked with our caterers to assess the water required and carbon emitted in the production of a range of recipes served at our outlets.

It is suggested that an average sustainable dish consumes 800-1000g CO2 and 800-1000 litres of water. There are however many meals that have a lot lower footprint than this range. Chicken often falls into this category, however veggie options with recipe’s high in butter and cheese can mean veggie options can have a surprisingly high carbon footprint. Red meats seem to have an environmental and particularly a carbon red flag with pulse-based meals with a very low footprint. The research found, for example, homemade beef lasagne had a 4.5kg CO2e and 2,813 litre footprint per serving compared to a chicken biryani roti with a 0.336Kg CO2e and 393 litre footprint. The plant-based beetroot shawarma, kiln dried flat bread, batata harr was the winner with a 0.195 kg CO2e and 315 litre footprints.

Simon Goldsmith, the university’s Head of Sustainability will host the event with Emily Shankar and Kate Draganisis the project explaining more about the project, its results and what we can all do to reduce our ‘environmental footprints’.

How to join

Thursday 3 March 2022 13.00-14.00

Click here to join the meeting

BOOKING REQUIRED

Further details