ILS Away Day

At the University's Information and Library Services (ILS) team's Away Day today, the Sustainability team were invited to present to the 120 ILS staff.   Sustainability was the theme of the entire day so the presentation with the aim of raising awareness of sustainability within ILS and getting more staff involved. So firstly as well as the usual definitions we played  the fun short video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NiTN0chj0  .




Graph showing the results of the SusteIT tool for the University 

Then we went onto what it means for the university- it's always very difficult to condense that in to a short presentation but we focussed mainly on the carbon management plan and waste and recycling. It was useful to have completed the SusteIT energy and carbon footprinting tool which indicates that ICT equipment is responsible for 15% of the university's carbon footprint associated with energy use.

Next up were the ILS Sustainability Champions - ILS have two champions per campus. We heard how they got on with the Green Impact workbook and what they had achieved over the past year.  The biggest impact they have had this year has been setting all the student printers in the labs to print duplex as default and this has had a very clear effect on paper consumption. Using the very apt nautical theme with the deck of the Titanic as the guide to indicate paper usage- consumption had been greatly reduced.  

Next up was Neil Collins talking about the power management software that the university has trialled and has showed that on average we could save about £37 in energy costs per student lab PC if implented on our current PCs. Once the upgrade to the student PCs is completed over summer the project will be pursued.

We were also treated to a fun quiz using some interactive technology in a 'Who wants to be a millionaire style' multiple choice quiz on sustainability showing that some people were actually listening to the sustainability team earlier as most now know how much waste the university created annually- over 100 tonnes and our carbon footprint. 

At the end there was an interesting discussion covering what ILS projects are on the crads for the next 12 months and many of these will have a huge impact on reducing the carbon footprint and cover many of the the JISC top 10 tips which is good news for the university.