Operations

Enhancing biodiversity across our campuses

Queen Mary works directly to maintain and enhance biodiversity across its campuses through biodiversity-friendly grounds management and habitat creation. 

During 2024/25, maintaining, enhancing and promoting green spaces across our campuses remained a specific University sustainability objective. This work is supported through our biodiversity and ecological enhancement programme, which incorporates regenerative horticulture and measures designed to provide habitats and resources for plants and wildlife. 

Across our green spaces, biodiversity-supporting features include native and sustainable planting, community growing spaces, a community orchard, bug hotels, hedgehog houses and raised vegetable beds. Grounds management has also included reduced mowing to support wildflowers and pollinators, the use of natural materials to create wildlife habitat, and a shift towards more sustainable perennial planting. 

Queen Mary is continuing this work through a campus-wide approach to maintaining and enhancing green space, supported by biodiversity assessment and the development of a Biodiversity Action Plan. 

Sourcing food more responsibly

Queen Mary’s Sustainable Catering Policy sets out how we reduce the environmental impact of food served across our campuses through more sustainable and responsible sourcing. 

We prioritise local and seasonally available ingredients and specify produce from farming systems that minimise environmental harm and meet appropriate ethical standards. Meat, dairy and eggs are sourced to high environmental, ethical and animal-welfare standards, including Red Tractor-certified UK produce, while fish species identified as most at risk are excluded and fish is sourced from sustainable and MSC-certified sources. 

We also purchase Fairtrade and responsibly sourced products, favour UK-produced food and drink from suppliers with clear environmental commitments, and continue to increase meals rich in fruit, vegetables, pulses and nuts while reducing reliance on foods of animal origin. 

These commitments embed sustainable farming and food-production considerations into campus catering and help reduce impacts on land, biodiversity and natural resources. 

Building biodiversity into campus development

Queen Mary integrates biodiversity enhancement and ecological conservation into refurbishment and new-build projects, ensuring that the ecological value of campus land is considered alongside changes to the built environment. 

This approach is reflected in Queen Mary’s construction and refurbishment programme, where biodiversity-supporting features are incorporated into project design. The Mile End Library extension, for example, includes a green roof together with bird and bat boxes, creating additional habitat alongside the expanded building. 

The Library development, officially opened in 2024, demonstrates how biodiversity measures can be incorporated directly into major campus projects rather than treated as an addition after construction is complete. Its green roof forms part of a wider package of environmental design measures integrated into the refurbishment and extension. 

Queen Mary also states that biodiversity enhancement and ecological conservation are to be embedded across refurbishment and new-build projects, supporting a planning approach in which development and habitat enhancement are considered together. 

Protecting ecosystems through responsible water discharge

Queen Mary has formal Waste Water and Trade Effluent guidance setting standards for the management of normal wastewater, surface-water runoff, laboratory wastewater and trade effluent across its campuses. 

Waste substances must not be discharged through sinks where they could harm the environment, damage the sewerage system or create risks to public health. Persistent chemicals, heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, chlorinated compounds, highly acidic or alkaline wastes and other prescribed substances are specifically excluded from disposal through the drainage system. Queen Mary also applies the same discharge standards used for permitted commercial research to laboratory wastewater arising from research and teaching. 

Campus-specific trade-effluent permits are in place for Mile End, Whitechapel and Charterhouse Square, while hazardous liquid wastes that cannot safely enter the sewer system must instead be managed through Queen Mary’s hazardous-waste procedures. Hazardous waste must be correctly classified, labelled and transferred through authorised disposal routes, and it must not be discharged into the University’s surface-water drainage system. 

These controls reduce the risk of chemicals and other pollutants entering waterways, soil and surrounding habitats, helping protect ecosystems, wildlife and human health.