Wildflower Meadows at Avery Hill

A couple of months ago several hundred square meters of campus were seeded with wildflower and many of the grass areas had their mowing schedules relaxed. This lunchtime I headed out with my camera to see how they were getting on.

A Butterfly rests in the shade next to the Shuttle

Section of the field at Avery Hill seeded with phacelia wildflowers

Looking across the area in the sports field that has had the mowing schedule relaxed

Greater willowherb growing next to the Shuttle

A thistle grows in the long grass looking towards the Southwood Site

A bumble bee on the hunt for pollen

Two bees working away at our wildflower patches next to Fry Building

A bumblebee searching for nectar in a lavender bush

Meet Camilla our Beekeeper

Camilla Goddard and the Greenwich bees - Photo: Courtesy of Ben Mostyn & Anya Rice at Superimpose Magazine

If you head accross to Superimpose Magazine at superimposemag.com you will see a wonderful set of photos of the Greenwich bees and out resident beekeeper Camilla Goddard. There is a short interview with Camilla where she describes how she became a beekeper and plots out her day to day activities during the summer months. You can also see Camilla in action by watching the short video embedded below.


Capital Bee from Superimpose Magazine on Vimeo.

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

Photos from the Greenwich Green Week

The final day of Green Week saw the fayre roll into the Greenwich Campus. The day at Greenwich brought together staff and students who work and study on the campus. Along with the popular stands the day also saw Camilla Goddard take a number of staff and students to see the hives at the Mausoleum despite the pouring rain!

Graeme from ABM catering gets in early to prepare the culinary delights offered up by caterers ABM to the participants of Green Week. He has cheeses all local and organic, apples from Kent and cakes and flapjacks baked in house using Fairtrade products.

Dr. Bike gets onto some major bicycle repair, kindly provided by Greenwich Council for staff and students for absolutely nothing. After having his bike fixed one student remarked, 'this is the best event a student could wish for!'

Free food draws in the punters.

Camilla Goddard prepares the smoker before opening up the hives. The smoke helps to calm down the bees and allows beekeepers to tend to their bees without them getting angry.

Twelve staff and students came along on the 'Meet the bees' walk and got a chance to peer into the inner workings of the hive.

And this is what they saw. Bees reduce their numbers considerably in the winter time but come summer time and at the height of the pollen and nectar collecting season this hive could have as many as 70,000 bees inside.

2010 The Year in Sustainability

2010 has been a big year for sustainability at the University of Greenwich, and looking back at what we have achieved I believe we can be proud of how we have taken the University forward.

The successes of the Sustainability Team were reflected in the People & Planet Green League which was released in April when the University of Greenwich jumped from 103rd (2009) up to 61st. Sustainability issues are moving further up the agenda within the higher education sector so it will be difficult to achieve such a large jump this year, although we are of course committed to keep improving and constantly reviewing the University’s approach to sustainability.

January 2010 saw the University of Greenwich present and approve its Sustainability Policy, which can be seen here (www.gre.ac.uk/sustainability/sustainability) and is signed off by the University’s Vice Chancellor Tessa Blackstone. The policy draws together the findings of a baseline review that was conducted to establish the University’s environmental aspects and impacts and develops a policy to deal with these. The policy was drawn together as part of the environmental management system that the University has signed up for (EcoCampus). In the summer of 2010 the University was awarded the Bronze award by EcoCampus and we hope we are just a couple of months away from achieving Silver now.

EcoCampus Bronze Award

With carbon and energy reduction becoming a key priority through the Carbon Reduction Commitment being introduced into UK law and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) introducing requirements linked to carbon reduction as part of their Capital Investment Framework (CIF2), the University has taken some significant steps towards addressing these issues. HEFCE require that each institution should have a carbon management plan submitted by March 2011 and have set a sector wide target of 43% reduction in emissions by 2020 (against a 2005/06 baseline), so many of the cogs whirring away in the Sustainability Team are working towards achieving that target.

On waste the University has seen new bins being introduced at the Greenwich Campus which are divided in two for main two waste streams that the University creates. However the recycling rate at the University varies widely from very good in some areas achieving nearly 70% recycling and the not so good where some areas are achieving no better than 30% recycling. In 2011 waste and recycling will rise up the agenda and as a result we will expect the amount of waste generated to go down along with the amount sent to landfill and the percentage of waste recycled to go up. The University ran a very successful re-use campaign at the end of the summer term in 2010 diverting would-be waste from Avery Hill halls of residences to the benefit of charities through CRISP. Internally the emergence of reusing everything and anything through the University’s own unofficial freecycle of the ‘all-staff-announce’ emails has been a great success – in fact the Sustainability team office is kitted out with many an item first offered on the internal email.

New Bins at Greenwich Campus

Food has been another area of achievement for the University, following on from 2009’s award for discontinuing the use of bottled water in hospitality. The University was awarded the Good Egg award at the Good Food on the Public Plate Awards and were celebrated for five areas of achievement, including the use of organic milk, free range eggs and MSC certified fish. On top of these achievements 2010 saw the first meeting of the Fairtrade Steering Group which includes the Students Union (SUUG), the Medway Student Association (UMSA), ABM (the main University caterers) and Sodexo (who also provide some catering on campus) who are all intent on achieving Fairtrade Status for the University.

Biodiversity has appeared on the agenda for the University in 2010 with the creation of the Biodiversity Steering Group and draft Biodiversity Action Plans have been drawn up for each of the University’s sites. 900m2 has been identified on the Avery Hill Campus for an agricultural grade pollen and nectar bee mix to be planted, which will be great news for the two hives of bees that now occupy the gardens at Southwood House. Greenwich Campus has also seen five hives introduced in 2010 into the mausoleum area, right next to where Sir Thomas Hardy (Nelson’s right hand man) is buried, and all these bees will busy pollinating come the springtime. Good news for anyone who wants to use the fruits of the campus for, blackberry and apple pie, quince jelly or sloe gin (on that note I would have to say 2010 sloe harvest produced a delicious couple of bottles!)

The Sustainability Team has experienced a lot of growth this year, even without the pollination of the bees on hand! Of course there is the very important addition to the team in the shape of the Green Gnome (yours truly) who has been prolific in his blog writing and on twitter, oh and John too, who joined the Sustainability Team in April, and has now signed up for a further 12 months with the Sustainability Team. Along with the direct additions to the team we have now swelled in influence thanks to the creation of the Sustainability Champions Network. There is now a sustainability champion in almost every department helping to promote the University’s Sustainability Policy and to promote environmentally friendly and sustainable practice within their department. To help them do this the Green Impact project has been rolled out for the first time in the University and our sustainability champions are busy implementing tasks such as setting all printers in their department to print double sided, promoting the University’s green travel initiatives and implementing shutdown plans to ensure energy is not wasted over holidays and weekends.

John

Green Gnome

The sustainability champions are proving to be a key communication channel to the wider University community, and that is not the only step towards better communication we have seen. The sustainability website is soon to launch following on from the emergence of the sustainability twitter feed and of course this blog. The Sustainability Induction was introduced for new starters (and existing interested staff) and also for the new student Residential Assistants. Interserve the University’s new suppliers for portering and cleaning had to include their sustainability credentials when tendering for the cleaning contract and this is something that all our suppliers will be expected to do in the future.

New Green Cleaning products

John and Kat became more involved with LUEG, the London Universities Environmental Group, both taking up places on the group’s executive board, and hosted the LUEG AGM at Greenwich in the summer time.

Travel wise John and Kat continue to cycle to work on a daily basis and were both in the top five riders from the University that took part in the TFL London Cycle Challenge in June, Neil Garrod, Tom Barnes and Adele brooks were the other three. Overall the University clocked up more than 10,500 miles, saving around three tonnes of CO2 and burning the equivalent of over 1,500 Mars bars in calories. The University has also been successful in receiving funding from Walking Works to promote walking to, from and while at work and Simon Baldwin from Accommodation walked away with 24 mince pies as a result of winning the walking to work mince pie challenge.

Before this turns into a dissertation I shall sign off with the knowledge that I haven’t even started to tell you about the 100 or so projects identified to go into the Carbon Management Plan, the voltage optimisation units that have been installed, the Greenwich graduate attributes or about many of the other Sustainability success stories that have emerged from the University of Greenwich Sustainability Team over the course of 2010. Here’s to 2010 and to a look towards 2011 hoping that we will be even more successful over the next 12 months. Happy New Year!

London Bee Summit

Yesterday saw John head down to London South Bank for the London Bee Summit which brought together the country’s experts on bees, bugs, pesticides and organic gardening to discuss the plight of the bee and launch a new funding package for bee keeping in London.

Myles Bremmer, the CEO of Garden Organic, chaired the afternoon proceedings and introduced Lord Henley, a Peer who works as Under-Secretary of State for Environment as part of the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Lord Henley was quick to boast about his qualities as a marmalade maker but used his opening address to encourage beekeepers to register on Beebase which is set out to ‘provide a wide range of free information for beekeepers, to help keep their honey bees healthy.’ Clearly a large part of the bee keeping audience felt that DEFRA was not doing enough and this came through when the floor was opened up to questions. Quickly Lord Henley felt the room turn hostile as beekeepers questioned him on the use of neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are a type of pesticide which has been linked to a decline in bee numbers and colony collapse disorder which has seen vast numbers of bee colonies die out or ‘collapse’. The UK still allows the use of these types of pesticide despite growing pressure from beekeepers for their use to be limited or banned – something which has happened in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia. After Lord Henley denounced the claims from the beekeepers that there was significant evidence for the banning of neonicotinoids, and claiming UK laws were tougher than most of our European counterparts, he left the room as the pantomime villain and the target of jeers and hissing from the frustrated beekeepers.

Next up we had the esteemed Professor Opi Outhwaite from the University of Greenwich discussing what role regulation could play in honey bee health. Opi is currently working on research into the laws surrounding conservation and biosecurity of honey bees and (quite wisely) decided to avoid the sticky subject of pesticides on this occasion. Mike Brown from the Food and Environment Research Agency Bee Unit (FERA a subsidiary of DEFRA) described how FERA were working on research around the honey bee and again encouraged the audience to use their website beebase.

Honey Bee Pollinating

Nick Mole from the Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) managed to rouse the crowd of beekeepers with his hard-line anti-pesticide stance citing pesticides as the main reason for the collapse of one fifth of UK hives. He championed the honey bees worth to the economy to the tune of a £141 billion per year and stated that bees were vital in the production of 80 million tonnes of food per year. Had he continued beyond his ten minute slot Nick could well have had the crowd roused enough to march to parliament and stage an impromptu protest against the government’s stance on pesticides!
Nick Fraser from the National Trust spoke to the audience about chemical-free gardening and what we could learn about keeping a truly organic garden from the National Trust property gardens at Nunnington Hall. He also spoke about the National Trust ‘Bee Part of It’ campaign with BBC local radio stations. Tim Lovett from the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) talked about education and responsibility in apiary and Karin Courtman from the London Beekeepers Association (LBKA) talked about her love for the honey bee and how the LBKA has a mentoring service for those Londoners keen to try their hand at beekeeping too.

The half time break brought the delight of honey cake and the eagerly awaited honey tasting competition, won by the most delicious and quite fruity honey from the London Borough of Lambeth which reminded me for the ale Golden Glory. It also gave me an opportunity to meet our beekeeper, Camilla Goddard, of the five hives we have at the mausoleum in Greenwich and discuss the opportunity of running an introduction to the bees in the springtime next year – watch this space!

University of Greenwich Bees managed by Camilla Goddard

The second half of the summit was focussed more towards the community side of beekeeping. Elinor McDowall from Bungay Community Bees project told the audience about her experiences setting up a business model for community beekeeping. Tim Baker from Charlton Manor Primary School in Greenwich told us a story about how a swarm of bees had fascinated children and inspired him to set up a hive and a garden in the school grounds. Now, as Tim proudly boasts, when a swarm arrives in the local community it is his pupils that are called to collect the swarm. Perhaps we ought to invite his pupils along to the University to teach us? Steve Benbow from the London Honey Company gave a frantic presentation on his inspiration to keep bees from a maverick Ney York based beekeeper and how he has found the honey in London and urban areas can be better than that of the honey from the countryside.

Heidi Hermann from the Natural Beekeeping Trust focussed her attention towards the practices of beekeepers and looked at the practices of her peers to explain the bee losses. Heidi had a very convincing argument for a holistic and natural approach to beekeeping. She explained that she had been forced to look for alternative and sometimes illegal methods to protect her bees from pests such as the varroa mite, and avoid using standard pest control. Heidi stands by letting bees behave in a way most closely related to wild bees and like to let her bees swarm which breaks the brood cycle for the varroa mite. Her comments were warmly received by some in the audience although others mentioned the issue of a lack of understanding in the wider community – swarming bees are not especially dangerous but the general public tend to perceive them to be – and thus damages the reputation of the local beekeepers.

Sue Walton brought the end to the guest speakers by reminding everyone that it isn’t just about the honey bee. Buglife: The Invertebrate Conservation Trust, who Sue works for, are out to support all the pollinators whether they are honey bees, bumble bees, hover flies, butterflies or moths and by supporting all the pollinators we can ensure a future with coffee, strawberries and chocolate, three plants that pollinators provide that life continuing service for.

To wrap the evening up Rosie Boycott, the Chair of the London Food Board, announced the launch of the Capital Bee funding scheme, which will see 50 beehives awarded across London along with all the equipment and training to become a competent and responsible beekeeper. After the conference the Co-Operative provided wine while promoting their Plan Bee campaign a cheeky poke at Marks and Spencer’s Plan A. Plan Bee sets out that Co-Op farmers are not allowed to use neonicotinoids in their practices to protect the plight of bee.

Overall the conference gave a fascinating insight in the world of beekeeping and the issues surrounding it. One thing that was very clear from the conference is that there is a growing number of people looking to take up beekeeping and ‘Save the Bee’, and the University of Greenwich – now with no fewer than five hives across our campuses – can stand up and be counted amongst the bees growing number of advocates.

Greenwich Bees and Avery Hill Snow

It is an incredibly busy time in the Sustainability Team at the moment with the first draft of the Carbon Management Plan due this week, Fairtrade Internship interviews and a carol concert! If that wasn't enough last week we had the launch of our Green Impact workbook, three Green Impact workshops (one at each campus) and John was sent away for two days of waste management training with CIWM and Revise.

Amongst all of that we have still managed to take a few photos and check on our new bees at the Greenwich Campus and take a moment to absorb the snowy view from our office window.

Overlooking London and Greenwich Campus from the Royal Observatory

The bees at the Greenwich Mausoleum

Looking accross Avery Hill Park towards the Mansion Site

Avery Hill Park

View from the Sustainability Office

Photos from Southwood Lodge

I went along to Southwood Lodge this morning to see if I could get any decent photos of our bees for our friends in the PR department. Bees are not easy to photograph! They are constantly moving but I did manage one photo that I was happy with.

One of our honey bees at work

While trying to capture the bees I also found some other interesting bits and pieces in the Southwood Lodge garden.

Our hives in the garden

A few common puffballs

Unidentified mushroom

Quince

There's a buzz around the University of Greenwich

There's a buzz here at the University of Greenwich. We have been working hard here at the Sustainability office and have some exciting new developments and have made progress across a few areas since I last updated you.

Firstly that buzz you may be able to hear if you have been around the Avery Hill Campus recently. We have our first University of Greenwich bees. In the gardens of Southwood House we have a few fuzzy friends buzzing around our new set of hives. Our bees are of the honey making variety (maybe if you are really nice to us we will be able to make some available to you) so expect to see some University of Greenwich branded honey in the future.

Keeping with the theme of biodiversity we have found a few more interesting species on campus here at Avery Hill, a Mullberry Tree has been found, plenty of blackberries have been harvested, an oak tree that must be well over 100 years old has been spotted and few interesting species of fungi too - though I haven't been confident enough to harvest any mushrooms yet over a fear of an upset stomach.

Mushrooms in the Southwood House garden

We have been toiling away in preparation for the new academic year at the University and preparing ourselves for Freshers' Week. Expect to find us represented at both the Avery Hill and Greenwich Campus fayres and looking for members of our new People & Planet Group, telling new students about the recycling facilities at the halls of residence and distributing all sorts of information regarding anything to do with sustainability to anyone willing to listen.

Svetta our new intern has been busy scouring the University for information on the recycling facilities and we expect we should be able to put out a reasonable guide covering all the facilities, policies and practices across the University as a whole in the near future. Helping us along the way have been a few RAs and you can expect to meet some of them at the Freshers' Fayres next week.

The University has also had it's first Fairtrade Steering Group meeting, attended by SUUG, Sodexo, ABM and representatives from the University itself, who will be trying to gain Fairtrade accreditation for the University by increasing the number of Fairtrade products on campus. As well as the lovely Fairtrade products you can expect to see on the shelves you should be finding sustainable food too - the University is finalising it's sustainable food policy as we speak.

My biggest excitement recently though has been the arrival of a draft Green Impact Workbook in my inbox. A little while ago Charlotte Bonner from the NUS dropped by to meet some of our already enrolled sustainability champions to get ideas for making the University more environmentally friendly. So far she has sent 40 ideas across to us to peruse, adapt and comment on before we get the workbook finalised when she returns from cycling the Col du Tourmalet in France - an enduring test of strength and guile that I am all too familiar with! There is A LOT more to follow on this one and I can't wait to keep you updated as we progress!

What have we been up to this week at The University of Greenwich?

Have you ever reached Friday afternoon and stopped to think what have I done this week? Well after about three seconds we hadn’t thought of anything after a few more we realised that we have done a fair bit!

This time of year is a big time of temptation on the Avery Hill Campus at the University, everywhere you walk you can see fruits looking bigger, juicier and more delicious than ever. Just this week I have spotted my second fig tree, several blackthorn bushes (sloes grow on these), our director of facilities has found a bounty of quince, elderflowers have been noted, a rogue tomato plant has popped up in a flower bed, and there are countless blackberries in almost every bush! This is all after only spending a few minutes wandering around the Southwood site, who knows what we’ll find when we go hunting on the Mansion site next week?

So my eyes have been searching for the fruits of our campus this week as we have been spending a lot of time thinking about biodiversity. 2010 has been declared the International Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations and this week has been the Unofficial Sustainability Team Week of Biodiversity. As well as spotting all the aforementioned treats on campus we have been thinking about growing wildflower meadows on campus and considering whether to plant some more fruit trees here too. Please send us your suggestions!

In all this research I have come across a few bits and pieces that will be of interest to anyone who likes going outdoors in the late summer and stocking up on nature’s treats. If you are a resident of East London you will probably be interested in Hackney Harvest who have their first harvesting this weekend and have been spending the last month or so creating fruit maps of Hackney and the East London area. The Hackney Harvest lot have been inspired by Abundance Sheffield who have put together this brilliant booklet documenting everything you need to know about rediscovering urban areas as orchards abundant with fruits. This time next year expect to find a University of Greenwich fruit map and plans for homemade jams, jellies, pies, ciders and gins if I get my way.

As well as getting excited about fruit we have been planning to get a lot more students involved in helping out with sustainability next year, the wheels are in motion to create the first University of Greenwich People & Planet Group and to have a regular stream of volunteers and interns coming in and out of the Sustainability Office. Find us at the Freshers’ Fairs in September to join the People & Planet Group and at the GET Opportunities Recruitment Fair on October 13th to become an intern with the Sustainability Team (of course if you want to talk about internships, or the People & Planet Group beforehand make sure you get in contact).

Whilst not wandering around the campus I have been wondering what the best methods are for training up our staff sustainability champions, and in the digital age instead of burying myself in books and papers I have been straining my eyes across a million and one websites pooling together the best little bits and pieces from here, there and everywhere for our champions to feast on. One of the highlights I have come across is The Big Energy Challenge slideshow put together by the Bath and North East Somerset Council for their main public sector bodies. If you have a few minutes to spare it’s certainly worth flicking through and passing on to your friends and colleagues who are interested in saving energy.

Kat has become the co-chair of the London Universities Environmental Group (LUEG) which is busy setting its agenda for the next year. LUEG is a collective of London university based sustainability motivated professionals determined to reduce the environmental impact of London universities by sharing best practice, ideas, workshops and advice on everything from reducing the energy bills to reducing waste, saving water to buying Fairtrade and creating compost right through to building bee hives. Which reminds me of another thing, on Monday Kat and I will be meeting a local bee keeper to discuss the possibility of having some University of Greenwich bees – honey and crumpets anyone?