Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production

Our research

The Sustainable Production and Consumption and Inclusive Economy research group within Bristol Business School is focused on research that answers big social questions around transitioning to sustainable consumption and production in a way that is inclusive and equitable. In 2023, members of the group shared research on overstocking and increased production in response to “just-in-case” approaches, with proposals for reducing the environmental impact of the production of certain key goods, as well as research into production and consumption in the agri-food sector.

Members also undertook research into sustainability and the role of consumers in driving more sustainable consumption, while one member joined a colleague at the University of Nottingham to deliver a video series on food supply chains, sustainability, business practices and consumer choices.

Our students

November 2023 was Sustainability Month at Bristol Students’ Union. The Union ran a series of events throughout the month including a sustainability themed pub quiz, volunteer gardening sessions, a plant and sustainability fair, a tree walking event, arts and crafts sessions, and talks on topics including plastics, going plant-based, decarbonisation and social justice, and activism. A Book Swap and Swapshop were also set up in the Union building, with books, non-perishable food and clothing all available.

The Union also organises other opportunities for students to take collective action and make a sustainable impact. The Donate Your Plate campaign takes place over the Welcome period each year, with students moving out of residential halls in the summer donating their unneeded kitchenware, which can then be given out to new students in September.

Students who wish to focus on socially responsible business practices can take our intensive one-year MSc Management with a specialism in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. This course helps those in, or with ambitions to enter, roles as senior leaders to gain valuable insight into the theory and practice of sustainability in management.

Our communities

For our Community Apple Day in September 2023, we teamed up with local business The Cider Box to reduce the wastage of garden and allotment apples at the end of the season. Working with community organisations Lockleaze Community Hub, Hillfields Community Garden and Bramble Farm, Bristol residents brought their waste apples to be pressed into juice. We rescued a remarkable 1025 kg of apples from unnecessary waste, yielding 460 litres of apple juice, poised for transformation into an authentically Bristolian cider, with the apple waste happily devoured by the pigs at Bramble Farm.

Bristol Composites Institute are focused on delivering sustainable solutions to the design and manufacturing of composite materials. In 2022, they launched the Composites Perspectives Series of free public talks by experts in the field of composite materials on the latest thinking. Sessions explored areas including the role of composites in reaching Net Zero, improving composite manufacturing to achieve zero waste, circularity and recycling in composites, and new ways to produce sustainable composites. Sessions were also shared on YouTube.

Ourselves

Our Circular Economy Strategy sets out our ambition to manage our waste as sustainably as possible. We look for opportunities to reuse or recycle waste where we can, for example through our internal Re-Store scheme. Re-Store is modelled on sites like Freecycle and provides departments with a way to share and find furniture and other items for reuse or recycling. Items that do not find a home through Re-Store are offered to partner charities for resale.

A key part of our waste management has been tackling single use plastics on campus. Our single use plastic action plan and Sustainable Food and Beverage Policy set out ambitious targets for plastic reduction within our dining and catering. By 2023, single-use plastics had been eliminated from in-house dining areas, and campus catering had succeeded in moving 90% of products to reduced plastic alternatives.

We also work with local organisations such as the Children’s Scrapstore, who reuse scrap material such as paint donated from University maintenance and construction jobs as a low-cost creative play solution for local children’s groups. We give unneeded wood to the Bristol Wood Recycling Project, a not-for-profit social enterprise that works to provide affordable timber to the local community, and we donate abandoned bicycles to the Bristol Bike Project or to Life Cycle UK, who repair and rehome bicycles and encourage people to take up cycling, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Where we are not able to reuse or recycle, we use offsite recovery and energy generation technologies, meaning that less than 0.5% of our overall waste currently ends up in landfill.