Welcome to February's edition of Sustainable Halls 💚

Exams are over, deadlines have been and gone, and it’s time to get back into the swing of things. Welcome back to your monthly Sustainable Halls article!

February is the month for Halls Formals, so we’ll be talking about all the ways in which the Guild, the Halls Team, and catering staff work hard to keep the most iconic event of your halls experience sustainable. We’ve also got a few tips to minimise your carbon footprint while you dress to impress!

Catering 🍴

You can’t have a formal dinner without a good meal! All meals at Halls formals are provided by the University’s in-house caterer, Hospitality Liverpool. By keeping everything in-house, we can keep a much closer eye on the credentials of suppliers. Hospitality Liverpool only works with suppliers who abide by rigid sustainability standards, such as the TUCO Catering Framework. TUCO-compliant suppliers aim to choose sources with the best credentials, such as B-Corps and those with Social Enterprise UK (SEUK) accreditation, meaning they’ve proven that they work hard to embed sustainable practices into their organisation.

While meat is on the menu, we also offer a vegan alternative. Our vegan meal is a lentil and porcini wellington with veggies. This meal’s carbon footprint is approximately 5 times smaller than the non-vegan option! If you’ve not booked your ticket already, why not give the vegan option a try? You might not miss meat as much as you think!

You’ll also be pleased to hear our desserts are sustainable too! Cakehole, a local vegan bakery, provide hundreds of delicious cupcakes to all our formals for you to enjoy. Keeping it local minimises transportation costs, and by staying vegan, we minimise the carbon footprint of each cupcake!

The best way to prevent food waste at formals is to tell us if you can no longer attend! If you’ve booked a ticket, and can’t make it for any reason, please let us know by emailing: t.e.codling2@liverpool.ac.uk. That way, we can re-allocate your meal to another person.

Outfits 👗

We know ASOS, Shein, Temu, and other quick and easy sources of cheap clothes are attractive, especially when you’re probably only going to wear your formal outfit once or twice. But are you aware of the immense social and environmental costs of these services? Those clothes may be cheap for you, but someone else is paying the price.

Do you know the great range of alternatives in Liverpool? There are so many places to get cheap, preloved, or even free outfits! Here are a few of your options:

Zero Fashion UK – a local CIC which runs regular swap shops in the Metquarter Shopping Centre. Check out their Instagram for the next one – they’re even starting a fabric repair and alteration workshop which you can sign up for!

Permanent Guild Swap Shop – the Guild has run one-off swap shops for the past few years, but it will finally be getting a permanent space on the Guild Street in February! Unfortunately, this won’t be open in time for your formals, but please bear it in mind for any other events you may have coming up. The swap shop will be opening from Tuesday to Thursday, 10am to 4pm in the Guild Street. Come along to the grand opening on Tuesday 25th February!

Swap and share – if you know someone in another hall who has already had their formal, why not ask to borrow the outfit they wore? Getting as many uses out of our clothes is more important than ever, and this is a great way to start!

Vintage shops – there are more vintage shops in town than you can count! Bold Street is a great place to start, and it’s also worth looking in charity shops like British Heart Foundation or Oxfam for preloved clothes. Don’t forget, the Guild also holds a regular vintage kilo sale in Mountford Hall – keep an eye on the Guild website and signs around campus for the next one!

All the other bits! 🎉

We also do a number of other things to minimise formals’ impact on the planet! 

The candles we use on the tables are all battery powered – we ensure that all the spent batteries are recycled! By the way, did you know you can recycle batteries at Guild and halls receptions?

We use paper tablecloths which are sustainably sourced, as opposed to plastic ones which use fossil fuels in their production.

We keep printing to a minimum by using screens for signage and advertising wherever possible.

Even if you won’t be going to your hall’s formal, there’s plenty more to keep yourself occupied with this Feel Good February.

We hope you have a great February, and we’ll be back next month with lots of exciting opportunities including our second round of recycling audits! Have a great month!