Friday 15 April 2011

Bees found on Campus

Here we have a few photographs of some bees and insects that we have found bumbling around our campuses.

Bombus lapridarius (Red-Tailed Bumble bee) queen

Here's what I think is an Adrena fulva (Tawny Mining Bee) found on the ground at Avery Hill
Apis melifera (honey bee) worker on a mahonia flower
Bombylius major (Greater or Barred Beefly) male

Antocharis cardamines (Orange Tip) male
Osima rufa (Red Mason Bee) female

Friday 1 April 2011

New member of the Sustainability Team

April Fool’s Day is an important one here at the Sustainability Team as it is now one year exactly since Kat offered the job of Sustainability Projects Officer to myself and John, my sidekick. What better way is there to celebrate a year since that fateful day than to introduce our newest member of the Sustainability Team, Adam White.

Adam has taken the role of Environmental Management Systems Officer but you can call him the EMS Officer for short. He was previously working at Newcastle University in the Sustainability Team, who also have a marvellous blog: http://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/saveit. Adam brings with him experience in working with EcoCampus and will be helping us move towards achieving Silver and Gold through the EMS accreditation scheme. Very exciting news for us to have another member in the team and keep pushing the University of Greenwich towards becoming a more sustainable environment to work, study and live in.

Adam waxes lyrical in pop group SDF

In his private life Adam is a member of an illustrious pop band called SDF, who are on the cusp of greatness, and can be listened to by clicking the following link: http://www.soundcloud.com/sdf. I have included a photograph of him behind the microphone and one of him that we uncovered looking like he is on a hunt! After further questioning though, we found out it wasn’t foxes or clay pigeons he was hunting but staff members at Newcaste University that had been slow on the response of his probing questions about EcoCampus. As ever we have managed to equip Adam with all the latest gadgetry that we have sourced though our brilliant all-staff-announce email system. Photo's of our collection of retro desk phones will make it onto the blog soon.




On top of this exciting news I am delighted to say that there will be yet another new employee at the University who is dabbling in the world of sustainability. Yesterday Kat, Joanna from StudentForce and Vincent from Procurement were interviewing for a role of Sustainable Procurement Officer. The temporary role will help steer the University towards the development of sustainable specifications for supplies and services procured by the University and to integrate DEFRA’s Government Buying Standards into the procurement process. So look out if you are a University supplier, we shall be setting some strict targets to make sure that you are addressing your environmental impacts and aspects as well.