Sustainability: Catering and events

Meat-Free Mondays

At Green Templeton we have completely meat free Mondays in our catering provision. We have one plant-based day each week, when the kitchen is open, it means a range of tasty vegetarian and vegan dishes to fuel you through the day!

Vegan and vegetarian options are also provided at lunch service throughout the week.

Bring your own lunch box 

Takeaway lunches are served from the kitchen although to take advantage of this you will need to bring you own lunch box.

Bring your own cup

Our coffee machines in the Stables Gallery and Common Room are not stocked with single use cups, you will need to bring a reusable one with you to make the most of the free hot drinks.  The college has its own branded keep cups in a variety of colours, all available at the lodge for £10 each.  These cups are the standard cup accepted in libraries across Oxford

Reusable bar cup

When the bar is very busy, for safety and speed we switch to reusable cups! These cups feature a beautiful print by Weimin He of the Radcliffe Observatory.

We charge a £2.50 deposit for your first cup, after that, as long as you have a cup to exchange when ordering, you won’t need to pay a fresh deposit, The bar staff will give you a fresh cup each time in exchange for your used one.

At the end of the night you can either keep your cup to receive a discount or return it for a free GTC cocktail the next time you visit the bar.

Water Bottles

These bottles have recently been bought in for the Green Templeton community and available to buy for £16 each.  They are not only look great with a high quality finish but they are eco-friendly too!

• Proudly the UK’s most eco-friendly reusable bottle! Designed in London with industry experts to proudly be the only bottle to be made from 20% Recycled Steel, Reusable for 10 years + then Recyclable at end of life – a true circular economy gift!
• 200 mangrove trees have been planted in the GTC name
• They come in a reusable, and recyclable gift bag (allowing recipients to reuse their bottle, and keep it pristine for life). The reusable and recyclable gift bag is designed to explain the eco benefits of the bottles and your brand’s tree planting initiative, along with the technical features of the bottle: EG: Keeps liquids cold for 24 hours and hot for 12.

Water refill Stations

There are 5 filtered and chilled water refill stations on the main Green Templeton site.  These are in various locations are around site, including the dining room, just request a  refill from any member of the team whilst the dining room is open.

The filtered water in the dining room is also used by the catering team to provide water in reusable glass bottles for all catering on site.  The glass bottles have a lower carbon footprint over their lifetime; they remove the need for waste and recycling; they have zero landfill potential; and they reduce food miles

Ecopure based in Haddenham, who provide the dining room filtered water have a longstanding commitment with the charity Just a Drop, for every system they sell in the UK they make a donation to Just a Drop which provides clean water and sanitation projects in poor communities around the world.  Currently, donating enough to give clean, safe water to 50 children for up to ten years

#SwitchUpYourLunch initiative

In 2021, 2022 and every year since, Green Templeton has joined the campaign spearheaded by Good Food Oxford and served an exclusively vegan lunch in the college dining room as part of a pledge to improve Oxfordshire’s ecological footprint.

Fairtrade

We are 1 star Fairtrade accredited.  This award recognises the achievements of the institution and its partners from September 2022 to April 2024 with the next review taking place in 2026.

Fairtrade changes lives by changing trade; transferring wealth back to farmers and workers in developing countries who deserve a decent income and decent work. Fairtrade are the leading independent global movement for trade justice, and are still the most recognised and trusted sustainable trading standard in many leading markets.

We offer Fairtrade sugar, bananas, tea, coffee, chocolate and biscuits all of which are used for conferences and events.  The kitchen only  use Fairtrade chocolate in their homemade desserts and the bar served both Fairtrade wine and soft drinks. Activities have also been organised during Fairtrade Fortnight in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

 

Conferencing and Events

Living centrepieces have been a feature of college activity in place of cut flowers.

Events use potted flowers for table centres or local wild flowers from Chipping Norton flower farm.

We have introduced a discounted tea and coffee option for event or conference attendees to bring their own reusable cup for tea and coffee breaks.  Get in touch on email to find out more events@gtc.ox.ac.uk

For smaller conferences we use china crockery as a standard, but where this is not possible we have chosen to use a bagasse plate/bowl. Bagasse is a natural byproduct of sugarcane refinement. It is the fibre that remains after sugarcane stalks are crushed to extract their juice. Bagasse pulp requires minimal processing and elemental chlorine free (ECF) bleaching to turn it into a woven high-strength paper that is biodegradable and compostable.

We feel that this is the best alternative for us at this time as the recycling plant is unable to accept many forms of compostable food packaging into their food waste streams. They say, this is due to the time it takes for compostable packing to break down in their anaerobic composting facility, the increased time required results in the compost quality becoming unviable for them to sell on to the commercial market. Despite this, we feel that introducing a compostable item that takes on average 12 weeks to decompose into landfill, rather than a singe use plastic item that will take 1000’s of years is the best alternative at this time. All items of hot food are packaged in these boxes so please place them along with your wooden cutlery into the general rubbish bins when you are finished.

Menus

Formal and dinner menus are displayed on a screen in the servery, often showing the provenance of products and the sustainable details of suppliers