Goal 12: Policies, processes and practices
The following page outlines specific policies, process and practices in support of Sustainable Development Goal 12 Responsible consumption and production.
Ethical sourcing policy
We have policies on ethical sourcing of food and supplies. These include:
- Fairtrade Policy
- Animal Welfare Policy
Outsourced suppliers and the supply chain
Suppliers to the University of, for example, equipment, stationary and building contracts are required to minimise their use of disposable materials through procedures in the award and management of university contracts through our approach to responsible procurement. For example, as part of our Supplier Engagement Tool we receive information from suppliers on their management of waste and single-use/disposable items.
Waste disposal
Our training procedures provide regulation and guidance to ensure the correct disposal of waste, covering hazardous materials. We provide guidance for hazardous waste identification, moving hazardous waste and record keeping in relation to hazardous waste.
We also have policies to measure the amount of waste sent to landfill and recycled, with commitments to reducing the waste produced. These can be found in our Environmental Sustainability strategy (Sections 5.1 and 5.4).
Where disposal of waste is the only viable option, we actively seek to use more sustainable treatment technologies to reduce waste sent to landfill. Our policy and current waste contract ensures that zero waste is sent direct to landfill. This is achieved by taking all non-recyclable (residual*) waste to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Trafford Park where it is shredded before it is transferred to a facility in FerryBridge in West Yorkshire run by Multifuel Energy Ltd where it is used as a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). For more details visit our operational web pages.
Plastic minimisation
We have multiple policies which cover minimising plastic usage. These include:
In our Environmental Sustainability strategy (pg. 31), we also have a commitment for all laboratories to achieve a LEAF award to a minimum of Bronze (with 25% of labs to achieve minimum of LEAF Silver) and adopt our 6R “responsible plastics protocol” by August 2025.
Disposable items
We have policies around use minimisation of disposable items. These include:
Minimising disposable items and supporting a circular economy is also in our commitments to Resource Management in our Environmental Sustainability strategy (Section 5.4).
We also ensure these policies extend to outsourced services and the supply chain through our Supplier Engagement procedures.