Bristol SU passes motion to support plant-based catering across university campus

The University of Bristol Student’s Union has passed a motion to make the entire university plant-based.

The Annual Members Meeting (AMM), held in the physics building on Tuesday evening, saw the motion pass after a successful campaign led by Plant-Based Universities.

Plant-based Universities clam their mission is to “end the climate crisis”. They have been consistently campaigning for all the food offered by the university to be plant-based.

The motion returned to the 2025 debate, after it was opposed in last year’s annual SU meeting.

Plant Based Universities explains its goals to for the accessibility of more plant-based pre-packaged food at the source and the reduction of the price of plant-based food.

Bristol joins the likes of Cambridge, Newcastle, Lancaster and University College London in moving towards a climate friendly on campus menu. It is unclear at this point by when Bristol will be 100 per cent plant based like other universities across Europe, including Netherlands and Austria, but Bristol will now make huge steps to push a predominantly plant-based agenda.

The AMM is the SU’s biggest democratic event, allowing for students to voice their opinions on different motions, and set up agendas for change. All students can submit motions, as well as vote on them during the meetings that happen annually.

The success of the motion comes after a protest in Senate House on Monday, where a banner reading “Plant-based university end the climate crisis” was dropped.

Agnes Sales, second year student at the University of Bristol said that the success of the motion highlights “students are willing to vote for no-nonsense climate solutions and set an example for the rest of the country to follow.”

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Various academic studies have suggested that switching to a plant-based diet would not only benefit the planet tenfold, but would be considerably cheaper. This is the message purported by plant-based universities, which on its website references a 2018 Oxford study that showed 76 per cent of global farmland would be freed up for other purposes if we all adopted a plant-based diet.

Agnes referred to recent extreme weather across the world that she argues was “made much more likely by climate breakdown.” She added that “transitioning to plant-based food is so important.”

The SU website details the motion, with offer students the chance to “transition to sustainable and affordable SU catering by adopting a plant-based menu.”

Other motions in this year’s debate included implement recycling soft/flexible plastic, championing the wellbeing of student groups, and extending the eligibility criteria for students doing non-modular professional programmes – which were all passed in Tuesday’s vote.

Further information on the plant-based motion can be found here.

Featured image via Plant Based Universities