Greenwich Green Week is Coming

Plans are in full swing for the first University of Greenwich Green Week. Throughout Green Week there will be a travelling fayre making it's way across the University starting at the Medway Campus, moving onto Avery Hill and eventually ending up at Greenwich. At each campus you will be able to come along to the fayre and find out all about what is going on across the University from cutting carbon to increasing recycling, reducing waste to future technologies designed to save us all time, money and energy. We have displays from various departments, local groups, charities and contractors all with advice on what you can do to 'go green'.

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=141920192497242#!/event.php?eid=193870603963444

Medway - Tuesday 8^th Feb – Pilkington Atrium 12-2:30pm

Avery Hill - Wednesday 9^th Feb – The Dome 12-2:30pm

Greenwich - Thursday 10^th Feb – Queen Mary Undercroft 12-2:30pm

The concept of Green Week comes from a national group known as People & Planet who are infamous in the Higher Education sector for producing the Green League. People & Planet have student groups dotted all around the country at various different Universities and colleges and it would normally be the People & Planet society that would organise Green Week. At the University we do not have such a society yet so the Sustainability Team have taken it upon themselves to organise a Green Week for everyone who works or studies at the University. Hoorah!

As well as the fayre coming round to each campus we will be launching a Green Credits competition, poster competition and a logo competition and I will post details of those on here, there and elsewhere closer to Green Week.

For a summary of what is going on at each campus look below, most importantly though come along and find us!

Medway 8th February – Pilkington Atrium 12-2:30pm

The Pilkington building has the highest lunchtime footfall on the Medway Campus with a high number of students and staff expected to visit during the lunchtime period.

Stands:

Sustainability Team: The Sustainability Team will be on hand to promote the University’s efforts towards operating in a more sustainable manner. They will provide information on reducing the University’s carbon emissions, the Sustainability Champions Network, Green Impact, green travel, recycling and waste, biodiversity and will be on hand to answer questions you may have on these topics.

School of Engineering: The School of Engineering will be displaying bicycle powered generators and give people an opportunity to hop onto a bicycle and see how much effort it takes them to generate enough electricity to power everyday household items. Challenge a friend and see who can get closest to generating enough electricity to power a toaster!
Medway Exclusive: Green Energy Tour – Meet at the Green Week Fayre at 1pm to be taken round to see the green energy projects at the School of Engineering including the brand new solar wall!

Bywaters: Meet the University’s waste contractors and find out what and where you can recycle and what happens to your recycling when it leaves the University.

UMSA: The Universities at Medway Student Association have won awards for their environmental performance and they will be at Green Week to tell you how they have achieved them. They will also be getting recycling message across to the students on campus. Detailing the Part Time Carnivore campaign & how students/staff can get involved. Detailing the Degrees Cooler campaign & how students/staff can get involved. Highlighting local GREEN volunteering opportunities.

ABM: The Universities caterers are here to promote Fairtrade and Sustainable food and will have some delicious samples of locally grown apples, cheeses from local daries and cakes baked with fairtrade products. Here you can find out about the University's Fairtrade steering group and find out all about what has been done with Sustainable food as well.

Tapwater.org: The University of Greenwich has highly rated tap water supplies at every campus. Tapwater.org are here to tell us about the virtues of tap water, where you can re-fill your water bottle and how to get your hands on a lovely reusable bottle.

Information Library Systems: ILS are here to tell us about how we can use the University’s hi-tech videoconferencing facilities. Imagine if you didn’t have to spend hours driving up and down motorways, queuing for buses, cycling until you drop just to get to a meeting on another campus – well you don’t – come and find out why.

Avery Hill 9th February – The Dome 12-2:30pm

The Dome area is perfectly positioned to attract staff and students during lunchtime with the canteen, SU Shop and gym facilities converging on the space we will occupy.

Stands:

Sustainability Team: The Sustainability Team will be on hand to promote the University’s efforts towards operating in a more sustainable manner. They will provide information on reducing the University’s carbon emissions, the Sustainability Champions Network, Green Impact, recycling and waste, biodiversity and will be on hand to answer questions you may have on these topics.

School of Engineering: The School of Engineering will be displaying bicycle powered generators and give people an opportunity to hop onto a bicycle and see how much effort it takes them to generate enough electricity to power everyday household items. Challenge a friend and see who can get closest to generating enough electricity to power a toaster!

Bywaters: Meet the University’s waste contractors and find out what and where you can recycle and what happens to your recycling when it leaves the University.
Avery Hill Exclusive: WIN! Joanna Powell from the School of Architecture is running a rubbish competition to help you understand what recycling goes where!

Tapwater.org: The University of Greenwich has highly rated tap water supplies at every campus. Tapwater.org are here to tell us about the virtues of tap water, where you can re-fill your water bottle and how to get your hands on a lovely reusable bottle.

Information Library Systems: ILS are here to tell us about how we can use the University’s hi-tech videoconferencing facilities. Imagine if you didn’t have to spend hours driving up and down motorways, queuing for buses, cycling until you drop just to get to a meeting on another campus – well you don’t – come and find out why.

Green Travel & Transport: The transport team have a great idea to help all you drivers reduce your environmental impact, beat the petrol price hike, lower your parking costs all while making new friends and meeting people – car drivers can all 5hare benefits between them.

Greenwich Council: The local council are giving all cyclists a chance to get your bicycle a health check in the presence of Dr. Bike. The Doctor will be on hand to pump your tyres, adjust your brakes and get your riding position checked and adjusted all for FREE. They will be promoting green travel across the borough and be pushing the importance of the 2011 census.

Greenwich Campus 10th February – Queen Mary Undercroft 12-2:30pm

The Queen Mary Undercroft is a hive of activity during the lunchtime period with staff and students coming to enjoy the award winning food with a backdrop of Sir Christopher Wren’s Baroque masterpiece.

Stands:

Sustainability Team: The Sustainability Team will be on hand to promote the University’s efforts towards operating in a more sustainable manner. They will provide information on reducing the University’s carbon emissions, the Sustainability Champions Network, Green Impact, green travel, recycling and waste, biodiversity and will be on hand to answer questions you may have on these topics.
Greenwich Exclusive: Meet the Bees! Camilla Goddard will be taking staff and students to see the five new bee hives at the mausoleum. Come to the Undercroft for 1pm when Camilla will take the tour.

School of Engineering: The School of Engineering will be displaying bicycle powered generators and give people an opportunity to hop onto a bicycle and see how much effort it takes them to generate enough electricity to power everyday household items. Challenge a friend and see who can get closest to generating enough electricity to power a toaster!

Bywaters: Meet the University’s waste contractors and find out what and where you can recycle and what happens to your recycling when it leaves the University.

ABM: The Universities caterers are here to promote Fairtrade and Sustainable food and will have some delicious samples of locally grown apples, cheeses from local daries and cakes baked with fairtrade products. Here you can find out about the University's Fairtrade steering group and find out all about what has been done with Sustainable food as well.


Tapwater.org: The University of Greenwich has highly rated tap water supplies at every campus. Tapwater.org are here to tell us about the virtues of tap water, where you can re-fill your water bottle and how to get your hands on a lovely reusable bottle.

Information Library Systems: ILS are here to tell us about how we can use the University’s hi-tech videoconferencing facilities. Imagine if you didn’t have to spend hours driving up and down motorways, queuing for buses, cycling until you drop just to get to a meeting on another campus – well you don’t – come and find out why.

Greenwich Council: The local council are giving all cyclists a chance to get your bicycle a health check in the presence of Dr. Bike. The Doctor will be on hand to pump your tyres, adjust your brakes and get your riding position checked and adjusted all for FREE. They will be promoting green travel across the borough and be pushing the importance of the 2011 census.

Greenwich Cooperative and Development Agency: The local cooperative to Greenwich will be coming along to promote local food growing, catering, the food co-op and green business support for any environmentally friendly entrepreneurs.

ieeeGreen Student Society: The ieeeGreen Society will be at Greenwich looking for new recruits and explaining everything that they are doing. They have a very interesting website and blog that you can follow here: http://www.ieeegreen.org/

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!