Green Food & Merch: Small Steps Can Make a Big Difference

As the largest faculty at the University of Münster, we aim to contribute to making campus life as sustainable as possible. In the area of Green Food & Merch, the School of Business and Economics focuses on collaboration with regional suppliers, conscious consumption, and environmentally friendly alternatives whenever possible. We also support central university initiatives, such as the establishment of a fully vegan-vegetarian cafeteria.

Green Food

  • Regional catering: For faculty events, we collaborate with local suppliers and increasingly offer fully vegetarian menus using regional ingredients. Beverages are also sourced from local producers whenever possible. Durable dishes are used instead of disposable packaging.
  • Fully vegan-vegetarian cafeteria: Among the 11 cafeterias and bistros at the University of Münster, one provides an exclusively vegan and vegetarian menu. All meals are prepared as sustainably as possible within the scope of large-scale catering. This includes using only fair-trade coffee in all facilities and prioritizing regional food products.
  • Sustainable networking and development: The Studentenwerk, which operates the cafeterias and bistros, is a member of the Fairtrade Town Münster steering group and the nationwide animal and consumer protection project Cage-Free Cafeteria. To prevent usable food from being wasted, cafeterias participate in research projects aimed at developing, testing, and disseminating concepts for sustainable production and consumption in out-of-home catering.

Green Merch

  • Collaboration with local suppliers: The faculty works with local providers such as UniPrint for printed materials and promotional items, reducing transport distances and supporting the local economy.
  • Conscious and environmentally friendly production: For promotional items, we choose the most sustainable options—for example, producing pencils instead of ballpoint pens—and use OEKO-TEX-certified materials for reusable fabric items like jute bags.
  • EcoNotes – our sustainable notebooks for first-year students: EcoNotes are notebooks made from single-sided printed paper that was previously discarded at various locations within the faculty and then processed into DIN A5 notebooks by a workshop for people with disabilities. This initiative promotes sustainable use of limited resources while supporting a local nonprofit organization.