'UK's first' fully plant-based workplace canteen opens

A green energy company has opened what it claims to be the UK's first fully plant-based workplace canteen.

Ecotricity, in Stroud, Gloucestershire, said the move was part of its aim to combat climate change, protect nature and promote healthy eating.

Dale Vince, founder of the company, said: "We think our new plant-based cafeteria is a first and proves that there's another way to do things.

"Plant-based eating can be affordable, healthy, tasty, and good for the planet. The future is plant-based, and the sooner we get there, the better for us all."

The Forest Green Rovers FC chair also created the first carbon-neutral football club, with vegan food served to the public on match day and the pitch's grass fed with seaweed.

On Friday, the founder's ex-wife Kate Vince was awarded more than £40m after their divorce by a High Court judge.

Cutting meat and dairy products from your diet could reduce an individual's carbon footprint from food by two-thirds, according to an Oxford study, published in the journal Science.

Climate change is the long-term shift in the Earth's average temperatures and weather conditions.

The world has been warming up quickly over the past 100 years or so. As a result, weather patterns are changing.

Between 2015 and 2024, global temperatures were on average around 1.28C above those of the late 19th Century, according to the European Copernicus climate service, external.

Since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one, the UK Met Office says.

The year 2024 was the world's hottest on record, with climate change mainly responsible for the high temperatures.

It was also the first calendar year to surpass 1.5C of warming compared to pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus.

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