We are thrilled to share that the Sustainability Café on Penryn campus has achieved accreditation from the Vegetarian Society for producing a fully vegetarian and vegan menu offering.
This accreditation marks a significant milestone in our commitment to offering sustainable and ethical dining options to you, our valued customers.
With this accreditation, you can trust that our vegetarian and vegan offering meet the stringent standards set forth by the Vegetarian Society, ensuring the integrity and quality of our products.
This accreditation reaffirms our dedication to promoting environmentally conscious practices and supporting the global shift towards plant-based lifestyles. By choosing our accredited vegetarian and vegan food, you can not only enjoy flavourful meals but also contribute to a more sustainable future for our planet.
We extend our thanks to the Vegetarian Society for their recognition and support, and we look forward to continuing to innovate and expand our range of vegetarian and vegan options. Join us in celebrating this achievement as we strive to make a positive impact, one delicious meal at a time.
A new gardening group launched this spring (21 March) at Belmont Garden, Falmouth campus. Students, Staff and community are invited to plant, potter and pick fresh produce every Thursday between 10:00am to 14:00pm – it’s free – simply turn up!
Belmont Garden is a hidden haven situated behind the Life Drawing Studio in a quaint corner of Falmouth Campus. Under the shade of a Eucalyptus tree, the allotment and greenhouse boast leafy vegetables, herbs like mint and rosemary, potatoes, rhubarb, strawberries, and much more.
The sessions are organised by volunteer Chaplain John from the Multifaith Chaplaincy, in collaboration with the campus Grounds and Gardens team. The Belmont Garden Group is open for all to join and welcomes novices and seasoned gardeners alike, to learn and grow together.
Students, staff, and the public are encouraged to get involved in our community garden. Here you can enjoy planting some veg, watering seedlings in the greenhouse, feeding the robins and blue tits, and take satisfaction in harvesting some fresh produce for your larder. For more information, email chaplaincy@fxplus.ac.uk.
On behalf of Falmouth University and the University of Exeter (Cornwall), FX Plus is delivering a campus wide commuting travel survey to gather insights into how students and staff are travelling to and from our Cornwall campuses.
We encourage all staff and students at Falmouth University, the University of Exeter (Cornwall), FX Plus and the Student Union, to complete this survey. Your responses will provide us with valuable information for campus planning, services, and infrastructure improvement, and will also help improve our carbon profiling as part of the university’s net-zero strategies.
The aim of the survey is to better understand the commuting travel behaviours across our Cornwall campuses. It is applicable to all students and staff based in Cornwall, who are commuting and travelling to our Cornwall campus. This includes Falmouth University, the University of Exeter (Cornwall), FX Plus and the Student Union.
If you are a University of Exeter Cornwall based employee or student, please fill in this survey, and do not fill in the University of Exeter Devon based staff survey.
Everyone who completes the survey, and enters their email address at the end, will be in with the chance of winning a £100 Amazon Voucher. Please provide your email at the end of the survey to be entered into the prize draw. We have three £100 Amazon vouchers to give away!
Data Protection Act: This information will be recorded and processed by the Falmouth Exeter Plus to:
Help understand the journeys being undertaken by students and staff travelling to and from our campuses, including distances travelled.
To support the planning and development of initiatives and projects to support sustainable travel to our campuses Your data will not be shared or used for any other purposes.
Have you seen our new ‘LitterLotto’ stickers which are appearing on campus recycling and food waste bins near you? Our Facilities team and Sustainability team have partnered with LitterLotto to give you a chance of winning £1000 every time you dispose of your recycling or food waste correctly.
To be entered into the weekly prize draw, all you need to do is scan the QR code on the recycling or food waste bin and a pop-up will appear on your phone (no app download needed), select what you are binning and take a picture of the waste to enter. So long as you are putting the right waste into the correct bin, the entry will be validated within the portal, and you will be entered into the weekly jackpot draw to win £1000.
The aim of the initiative is to reduce waste by educating and rewarding positive recycling behaviour. When scanning the LitterLotto QR code, if what you are wanting to throw away doesn’t appear in the options, it reminds you that the entry will not be valid and that it could contaminate the bin.
Dylan Jones, Recycling and Waste Officer said, “we are proud to be the first university campus to roll out LitterLotto. We know people want to do the right thing and hope the LitterLotto initiative will incentivise positive recycling behaviours and help to raise awareness of what cannot be placed in recycling and food waste bins (such as coffee cups!)”.
Initially, the scheme will run for a duration of 12 months. For more information about the LitterLotto, please contact Dylan on recycling@fxplus.ac.uk.
The Archives on Penryn Campus, shared by the University of Exeter (Cornwall) and Falmouth University, have appointed a new project Archivist and work has begun to catalogue four key Collections relating to Political movements in Cornwall in the mid twentieth century, from our Institute of Cornish Studies Archives: the papers of Mary Mann, Len Truran, Royston Green and Dr Adrian Lee.
Cataloguing Archivist, Lizzie Pridmore, has joined FX Plus Archives and Special Collections in Penryn and has launched the one-year project to catalogue the four Cornish collections, with the view to make them more accessible for all. This has been made possible thanks to the £35,000 grant funding awarded by Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants Scheme, supported by The National Archives, The Pilgrim Trust and The Wolfson Foundation.
Lizzie said: “I am looking forward to getting to know these collections better and as an archivist, bringing order to the collections through cataloguing and then making them available for reading and research is very satisfying! I’m interested in Cornish culture and identities so it’s a real privilege to work with these particular collections and I’m excited about the potential they have for exploring the political ideas that have helped to shape Cornwall as it is today.”
These collections share a common theme in the examination and documentation of the birth and growth of the Cornish Nationalist movement; however, the subject coverage is wide spanning – everything from proposed postage stamps to political posters are covered – including papers of industry, tourism, transport, employment, migration, devolution, language and more.
Having just skimmed the surface of the collection in the week since she joined us, Lizzie treated us to a glimpse of a few items from the collections that have already caught her eye. Below, you can see some of the treasures pictured and we cannot wait to see more in the coming year. Once completed, the collections will be made available for students, staff and the public to view by appointment at the Archives on Penryn campus.
Lizzie Pridmore, Cataloguing Archivist at FX Plus, with one of her favourite finds from the Royston Green collection, an introduction to the Cornish language, Kernewek, looking at the meaning of different place names.
A log book detailing work on the Falmouth & Camborne Liberal Association’s 1966 electoral campaign, from the papers of Mary Mann
From left to right: Electoral campaign poster for Len Truran, Meybon Kernow. Rules and Aims for the political party Mebyon Kernow. Press cutting from the Cornish Guardian, 7 June 1979, describing the formation of a Cornish Assembly and including a photograph of five members.
Poster for a production of a medieval Cornish mystery play, ‘Gwyrans an Bys’, ‘The Creation of the World’, at Piran Round.
Both Penryn and Falmouth campus have achieved Gold Cycle Friendly Employer awards, administered through the national Cycle Friendly Employer program and run by Cycling UK. The gold award is the highest standard available and demonstrates to students and staff the active travel and infrastructure on offer for cyclists.
Based on our climate emergency declarations in 2019 and a focus on supporting student and staff’s physical and mental wellbeing, active travel such as cycling and walking poses a lot of positive opportunities.
Oliver Milliner, Head of Sustainability at FX Plus, said: “the benefits are crystal clear when it comes to taking on active travel measures commuting to and from campuses. Active travel measures such as cycling not only supports personal health, but is a direct emission reduction initiative, reduces traffic congestion in the local community and also helps to save money”.
Oliver also highlights, “this award doesn’t deter from the fact there are still areas in which we can improve upon, in terms of service level, infrastructure and communications to encourage the uptake of active travel. Based on a survey we ran for staff and students in June 2023, 56% of staff and 11% of students are driving alone to and from campuses. This equates to approximately 54% of total commuting emissions each year. Only 4% of staff and 7% of students use cycling as their main mode of transport to and from campus.
“The main pieces of feedback from the survey are that people do not feel safe cycling on the roads and this is deterring them from getting out of vehicles”.
Oliver adds, “based on the survey figures, there needs to be a focus on phasing away from single car occupancy. We’re in the process of finalising our 2030 Sustainable Travel Plan to address key areas for improvement”. The new plan aligns with Cornwall Council’s 2030 Transport Plan which effectively focuses on modal shift as well.
The gold award achievement supports FX Plus and the universities of Falmouth and Exeter, by providing a roadmap to achieve continuous improvement. For any questions or queries on travel, please email sustainability@fxplus.ac.uk.
The Biodiversity, Sustainability and Ground and Gardens Teams have been hard at work to achieve some blooming good biodiversity outputs for 2022-2023. Abhishek Dixit, Biodiversity Project Officer at FX Plus, has reported a total of 1,152 wildflower plugs planted in 2023. In fact, we’ve planted a total of 1,572 plants since March 2022.
We also observed 5,145 square metres of grassland enhanced by wildflower seedling and turf planting. With 1,940 square metres of mixed evergreen and deciduous woodland enhanced by invasive plant removal and tree planting.
In addition to the daily contributions of our green fingered colleagues, some of this planting was also thanks to our weekly Campus Conservation Volunteering Sessions which are held every Wednesday lunchtime from 12-2:30pm, and last year an impressive 51 sessions were delivered for students, staff, and the general public. For full details about upcoming sessions visit our ‘Events on Campus‘ page.
All these activities are already helping wildlife on campus, as seen through new wildlife monitoring events. The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme is one such example, whereby we contributed the recording of 545 individual butterflies from 14 different species.
In total, our Biodiversity Project Officer has led 17 Wildlife Walks, participated in 12 Outreach Events and engaged 225 participants through these biodiversity events.
To continue to build on this work, we have a number of wildlife monitoring events planned for 2024, such as the RSPB Big Bird Watch events which will be held on both our Penryn and Falmouth campuses this month (26 and 27 January 2024), and a BeeWalk, Bat surveys, bird monitoring programme, and potentially a freshwater quality survey for our streams and ponds. Keep a look out for these future events on the FX Plus website here.
As we look back on December, it’s often a month of excess and overconsumption. It’s the month which creates a mountain of waste and recycling for us to drown in until the first bin collection after the festive holidays. Many of us will have sifted through the sacks of wrapping paper, sorted through plastic packaging and wrestled with a record number of cardboard boxes – it’s a tedious task and one which gets little recognition!
This is not the case on campus. Your noble waste and recycling efforts have not gone unnoticed. In fact, we can look back on 2023 and celebrate some waste related wins. Dylan Jones, Waste and Recycling Officer at FX Plus, has diligently been calculating what we throw away and has reported increases in recycling and a reduction in overall waste generated on Penryn campus when compared with last year’s figures.
Here are some 2022/2023 statistics (when compared with 2021/2022):
Food waste recycling has increased by 38%
All recycling has increased by 5.3%
All general waste generated on Penryn campus has reduced by 7%
Over 10,000 tetra pak cartons have been recycled since last January (2023), and we now average around 1,000 tetra pak cartons recycled each month!
Waste and recycling are ongoing challenges, but the above statistics are an encouraging indication that our campus community is moving in the right direction, an endeavour that which takes us closer towards our sustainability goals and reduces our negative impacts on the environment. Well done, you! Keep up the good work.
We are beginning to get those festive feels on campus as Food and Drink have launched some seasonal specials for everyone to enjoy! Here’s a list of some of the naughty and nice treats to fill your bellies with this winter:
Christmas Meal – Booking Essential!
A traditional Christmas meal will be available in the Stannary, Penryn Campus, on Thursday 30 November (only). Our catering team will be serving succulent turkey, roast potatoes, carrots, peas, stuffing, parsnips, Yorkshire pudding, pigs in blankets, and gravy. If you are plant-based, you can tuck into a nut roast with roast potatoes, carrots, peas, stuffing, parsnips, Yorkshire pudding and gravy. (£12.95)
To ensure that all catering needs are accommodated as closely as possible, please pre-book your Christmas meal at least two days in advance by emailing foodanddrink@fxplus.ac.uk. This will enable the team to plan the supplies, cook to meet the demand, and thus avoid any food wasted.
Seasonal Sandwiches
From this week onwards (Monday 27 November), Christmas market sandwiches with gammon, or pigs in blankets, or nut roast with stuffing, gravy, and chips will be served in the Stannary (£5.50). These festive favourites will also be available in the Fox Café on Thursday 30 November (only).
Festive Winter Warmers
Enjoy festive vibes from the Lower Stannary Deli Bar from Monday 27 November, they will be serving mulled wine, mulled apple, mince pies, and cakes. These cosy winter warmers will also be for sale in the Fox Café from Wednesday 29 November.
Koofi Crust-mas
Fancy a less traditional festive feast? Seasonal pizza specials are now available at Koofi starting from £8. Embrace the Crust-mas spirit and enjoy ‘Pigs in Blankets’ pizza, ‘Brie and Cranberry’ or ‘Ultimate Christmas’ with a vegan option. Festive toppings are also available as extras to complement your favourite vegan, veggie or meaty pizza from £1.50.
Street Food Vans on Campus
From Monday 27 November, a new food van arrives at the Penryn Campus – Nosh Pit, serving artisan international cuisine on Mondays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Bangers on the Go will continue to serve their handcrafted burgers and gourmet hotdogs and will finish for their Christmas holidays in mid-December.
Foodbank Collection Points this Winter
New collection points for Penryn & Falmouth Foodbank will be available at the Lower Stannary Deli Bar and in the Fox Café from 27 November until Monday 18 December. Please see list of current needed items and donate if able to do so.
Christmas Market – Wednesday 29 November
Come along to the Penryn Campus Christmas Market in the Upper Stannary on Wednesday 29 November from 11.30am until 3pm. There will be lots of talented student makers selling a range of crafts (great for gifts) including handcrafted jewellery, crochet, seaglass artwork, textiles, sustainable clothing, illustrations, cards, tote bags, hot chocolate bags, honey, and more! Do bring some change, as some stallholders may not be able to take card payments.
Winter Ball With Kona Beach Club
Kona Beach Club presents The Winter Ball, the perfect way to end the term and kick off the festive season. Taking place on Saturday 2 December, 21:00pm – 2:00am, the Stannary will be transformed into a Winter Wonderland with festive drinks, hot food & even a snow machine. There will be DJs playing a mix of music all night long until late. With each ticket, you’ll receive a free drink on arrival & keep an eye out on our socials for drinks deals we’ll be promoting closer to the event – of course, the shot bar will be back in action! Tickets are £14 (+ £2 booking fee), available here.
Bonfire night celebrations are just around the corner, and the Falmouth Fire Brigade has been in touch with some pointers to help you celebrate safely. We do not want you or anyone else to end the night in accident and emergency!
The advice is to not attempt your own bonfire or firework display and here’s why:
Reasons not to have a fire on the beach:
Local byelaws (you can be fined, and the beaches have CCTV)
Fires leave hot ashes on the sand and remain hot for 48hrs when buried (young children and dogs will be using the beach the next morning and they both like to dig in the sand)
Nails and screws within the wood will become exposed and buried (children and dogs love to dig)
Other people may stumble or trip into the fire
Reasons not to fire fireworks from the beach:
Unsafe/untrained firing of fireworks (without a fixed firing station you cannot control the direction it launches)
Behind the beaches are people’s homes and businesses (the wind direction may take the fireworks into these areas and cause fires)
Large numbers of people gather around the beaches on bonfire night (an uncontrolled firework may go into a crowd of people and cause life threatening injuries)
We would also like to remind all campus users that fireworks are banned on both Penryn and Falmouth campus. Instead, we encourage you to attend a licenced bonfire and fireworks display. Below, we have listed three of the largest local ones that you may like to visit.
Truro
Friday 3 November – 5pm – Tremorvah Playing Field
Truro City Council’s annual Bonfire and Fireworks Display will take place at Tremorvah Playing Field on Friday 3rd November.
Gates open at 5:00pm for a 6:30pm start. Entry is charged at £3 per adult and £1 per child (under 16). Click here for full details.
Falmouth
Sunday 5 November – 6pm – Falmouth Cricket Ground
Falmouth Firefighters Social and Welfare Club, and members of Falmouth Cricket Club will be hosting this year’s event at Falmouth Cricket Ground, Trescobeas Road. Gates open at 6.00p.m for a 7pm start.
Chaos Radio will be providing the entertainment and there will be burgers, jacket potatoes, hog roast and doughnuts available to purchase. Entry is £5 for adults and £2.50 for children. Follow the link for full details.
Pool
Sunday 5 November – 4pm – Heartlands
Heartlands annual bonfire and fireworks night takes place amidst renowned mining heritage. It is free to attend but a donation of £3 is recommended. The event opens with a fairground, delicious food vendors, and music from Phaze 2 Mobile DJ. Find full details here.
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