A Summer of Re-Use at the University

The summer has arrived at the University of Greenwich, the students have gone home for a few months and many of the offices, labs and classrooms are being re-furbished and updated. Once again the students at Avery Hill used the re-use project (run in conjunction with CRISP) to donate their unwanted items to charity and this year the project was rolled out to Macmillan Halls to give students in Greenwich the opportunity to donate their unwanted items too.

The CRISP Re-use project worked with over 70 different halls of residence this year, including the two from the University of Greenwich and had a reach as far as 19,943 students from 11 different universities. In total CRISP managed to save 30 tonnes from going to waste with nearly 85% of that being re-used. The overall estimated CO2 (e) reduction achieved by the project as a whole was 342 tonnes of which 21.1 was saved from the University of Greenwich.

The students donated a wide variety of different items including clothes, bedding, electronics, televisions, books, kitchenware and food. Everything from armchairs to an old Brooks leather saddle ended up in the back of the van when CRISP arrived to collect the items and all of these re-usable objects were transported to the CRISP warehouse to be sorted and re-distributed.

A selection of items donated at Avery Hill

Once the items have been sorted they’re sent out to a variety of different charities including, Ace of Clubs, Emmaus, Manna Centre, St Mungo’s, Streetlytes, the Marylebone Project and the Upper Room who all help for the homeless and vulnerable in London. As well as this charities working to support communities, children, animals, hospitals, right through to projects establishing sustainable projects in some of the world’s poorest countries are supported by the project including Bright Sparks, Clothes Aid, Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital, OFFERS/Ex-IT and TRAID.

Outside of the halls of residence many of the University’s facilities are being upgraded and prepared for the new influx of students in September and often this means a re-organisation and sometimes the removal of furniture. Rather than send our unwanted furniture to disposal we have been looking to a variety of different organisations to re-use what we have been unable to re-home within the University. This summer we have re-homed over 50 desks from the Drill Hall Library – 40 of them going to Bexley Grammar (one of the University’s feeder schools), the further 10 desks from the Drill Hall, 70 chairs from Greenwich labs and a small selection of office furniture from the School of Business ended up going to an organisation called TRUP (The Re-Use Partnership) who refurbish and re-distribute the furniture to local charities, organisations and start-up businesses.

Bexley Grammar students Celebrate Receiving the desks - (OK they're actually celebrating their exam results but they are pretty pleased with the desks too!)

Avery Hill Green Week Fayre

Today the Green Week fayre arrived at Avery Hill. Staff and students came along to the Dome to find out what the University is doing to reduce it's environmental impact, get their bicycles fixed by Dr. Bike, try out the bicycle powered generators and have a go at out rubbish competition!

Joanne  from the School of Architecture explains the rules of her 'Rubbish Competition'

Staff and Students write down their green ideas on what they would do if they were Vice Chancellor for the day.

Vanessa from Greenwich Council and Simon from the Transport Team promote the virtues of green travel to staff and students.

Moira and Ian get ready to attempt Joanne's 'Rubbish Competition'

Mike from tapwater.org explains to Gerrard how the average person spends £25,000 in a lifetime on soft drinks - switch to tap water and imagine what you could spend the money on.

Carol from the Avery Hill Library and John showing off the University's sustainability credentials.

Iain Metters and Tony Dodson race to see who can generate the most electricity

Lots of staff members went to try out cross-campus videoconferencing as a way of cutting down cross-campus travel

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!

University's take on our Re-use project.

Good news here at University of Greenwich Sustainability HQ. Our work is being recognised and being celebrated by the University as a whole today as our Re-use project ends up on the front page of the University website.

http://www.gre.ac.uk/pr/articles/latest/a1870-the-benefits-of-rubbish

Lovely jubbly!

Students Reducing Waste and Helping Charity at the Same Time!

The University of Greenwich has saved over one tonne of reusable items that would normally end up in the skip and local charities are the ones to benefit. Working in partnership with an organisation called CRISP, students and volunteers at Avery Hill Campus saved items that would have otherwise been thrown out at the end of the year. These items have been collected by CRISP who are now redistributing these items to a number of London based charities.

Isabelle in amongst the donations

The project was spearheaded by the University’s Sustainability Team, Kat Thorne and John Bailey, and run by their Sustainability Projects Intern, Isabelle Monk, who recruited student volunteers to help promote the project and collect the waste to a central point on Avery Hill Campus. Students, who typically leave behind and throw away a lot of waste when they return home for summer, were encouraged to identify items that they no longer wanted but could be re-used by charity. By the end of the project the students had donated over one tonne of items (that’s one kg per student!) including televisions, clothes, kitchenware, books, stationary and a lot of bedding.

All the waste collected together

Due to the variety of items donated there will be a number of charities that will benefit, much of the bedding will be going to local homeless shelters and will be keeping some of London’s homeless people warm this winter. Clothes will be filling the rails of the local charity shops and being sported by many living in refugee camps across the world while many of the other items will be sold on to raise funds for the likes of Red Cross, Traid, St. Mungo’s and Help for Heroes.

The Halls reuse scheme has run in a number of other London universities previously but this is the first time at the University of Greenwich. The pilot project has been widely hailed as a success and will be rolled out across all the halls at the University next year. The success of the project was thanks to everyone involved including Housekeepers, Porters, Student Accommodation office, and the student volunteers, especially Construction Management MSc student Ashrith Patel who dedicated a lot of time to the project. Thanks to everyone that was involved.

The guys from CRISP and the full van

Tomas helps with collecting a TV

Re-use of University Gym Equipment

A couple of weeks ago it came to the attention of the Sustainability Team that a refurbishment of the gym at the Medway Campus meant that a lot of old gym equipment was going to be thrown out. This is a regular occurrance within the public and private sector, not necessarily gym equipment, but perfectly usable equipment / furniture / etc. is thrown out every day.

There was a very simple solution to this issue of trying to prevent this equipment from being scrapped and recycled. An all staff email was circulated and within minutes there was a lot of interest in the equipment. In the end two thirds of the equipment was saved and given two fantastic new homes.

Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys took a third of the equipment for their GCSE and A-Level Sports students to use for weight training and a third went to a local rugby club. In the end only a small amount of the equipment was scrapped for recycling.

All staff emails are a great way of spearheading re-use at work and whenever you are about to get rid of old office furniture or anything that is still in a working and reusable condition it is worth while sending an email around. In this case it also ends up with a great story for the Sports Department. Look at how pleased Iain Metters looks here.