Responsibility for climate change is often placed on individuals, while the systems shaping our choices remain the same.
Aberdeen University Students’ Association (AUSA), the elected student representative body, passed a motion calling for the University of Aberdeen to move toward sustainable, ethical, and fully plant-based catering. Passed in 2019 and reaffirmed in 2024, it voiced the continued student support for plant-based university catering as part of climate action.
While these commitments set a clear direction, campus catering continues to include meat, dairy, eggs, and other animal products years after the motion – highlighting a continuing gap between student sustainability motions, institutional climate commitments, and current campus practices.
At the same time, sustainability has become a central priority in the University of Aberdeen’s long-term strategy. Under the Aberdeen 2040 framework, the university has committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions before 2040 and to embedding environmental responsibility across its operations. One of the university’s third-party providers is Foodstory, a zero-waste, plant-based café, which is a successful example of how plant-based catering can operate sustainably both ecologically and financially.
This sets a clear vision of how sustainability is a priority at the University of Aberdeen, and PBU campaigning students challenge how those commitments translate into everyday decisions, particularly through the food served on campus. Campaigners emphasise that their goal is not to control individual diets or lifestyles but rather to encourage institutions to make sustainable choices accessible and affordable on campus.
Students highlight both sustainability and affordability concerns. Natalia, a PBU society member, says, “I very rarely eat at the University. I would especially love to see the catering become more inclusive for people with allergies or dietary requirements.”
Cameron adds that the lack of “sustainable and affordable options on campus” is frustrating.
Fourth-year student Fred agrees that “eating at university is expensive,” noting that options remain limited for coeliacs and vegans.
Eating sustainably on campus is still harder than it can be: options are limited, often unaffordable, and treated as secondary rather than central to the university’s climate action and the students’ union’s declared climate emergency.
Students involved in the PBU society campaign work in alignment with the Rowett Institute’s institutional research on sustainable and healthy diets. They are looking forward to working with the university to help align its catering practices with existing student motions and university sustainability goals, supporting the university in meeting its own sustainability commitments.
Universities have a special duty to be among the first institutions to enact substantial change in response to climate and ecological emergencies, as they hold significant social capital and are the very institutions where much of our research and understanding of the climate crisis emerges. What happens on campuses shapes society: the debates in lecture halls, the culture in the student union, the values graduates take into the world. When universities act on climate, it shifts what people see as normal, possible, and necessary.
Fully plant-based catering is also more inclusive, not only because everyone can have plant-based food, unlike animal products, which many people cannot eat for religious, personal, or health reasons, but also because it is naturally lactose-free, naturally Halal, and very easily Kosher. It would also be an opportunity to make food on campus healthier and to conduct large-scale consultation and survey research with staff and students to make it more accessible to people with allergies, sensory sensitivities, and medical dietary needs.
Remarkably, Fraser Lovie, Head of Sustainability, shares that ‘transition toward more sustainable catering has already begun in smaller ways’. Red meat has been removed from university-run catering outlets, and plant-based and vegetarian options currently make up roughly 40–50% of the food available on campus.
However, Fraser stresses, “Since COVID, it has been a very challenging economic environment for catering in work/study places, and footfall has never recovered to what it was.” Concerns about maintaining demand and financial viability have been key challenges in implementing catering changes; for this reason, the university’s approach has focused on incremental change.
Similar initiatives are already emerging across Europe. Students at 24 universities have voted for plant-based catering, and institutions such as Stirling, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial, and Uppsala have backed the idea. Some universities are already implementing change: Graz opened a fully plant-based canteen in 2024, Vienna introduced largely plant-based menus, and Erasmus University Rotterdam has pledged a fully vegan campus by 2030.
With sustainability positioned as a core pillar of the Aberdeen 2040 strategy, the conversation around campus catering raises the question: how can universities translate climate commitments into everyday practices that shape student life?
At the University of Aberdeen, students at the newly established Plant-Based Universities society are now working to help answer that question through collaboration, research, and practical initiatives that align campus food with the university’s sustainability goals.
Students interested in supporting food sustainability at the university can get involved by contacting plantbased@ausa.org.uk