Bike Week and TFL Cycle Challenge

With the sun shining this summer we've been going bike mad here at the University of Greenwich! Last week was bike week and to celebrate we organised a whole mutitude of events including a 'bike bus' for new cyclists to commute into work with a more experienced rider, staff led bike rides and we also bought new cycle repair equipment for the three campuses. You will now find a track pump, puncture repair kit and essential allan keys and spanners at each campus gatehouse.

At the Medway Campus Keith Tomlins took a break from his work at the Natural Resources Institute to lead a ride around  St Mary's Island taking in the local sights and a little local history too. Amongst the keen cyclists on the ride there was a Mr Mark Johnson who is the Transport Strategy and Initiatives Manager from Medway Council. Mark was keen to point out how the local council has a number of schemes to support cycling in the Medway region, including locally led rides around the area.

The medway riders in front of the famous red tomato!

The photo shows Upnor Castle in the background and the famous giant tomato. On closer inspection it appeared to be a bouy! Everyone on the ride commented about how they enjoyed the mixture of cycling and history and we shall be looking to organise more rides like this soon.

In other cycling related news the University of Greenwich has been storming up the league table in the TFL Cycle Challenge and is now in 4th position for the 11-50 members category. So far 50 cycling staff have clocked up over 4,000 miles. Our target is to beat last year's effort of 10,500 miles and with a few long rides by staff members this weekend we could be on track to beat our prevoious year's record!

EcoCampus Silver Award for Greenwich!

I am delighted to announce that the University of Greenwich has now been awarded the EcoCampus Silver Award.

EcoCampus is an environmental management system (EMS) that the University signed up to which helps to put in place processes, practices and systems to drive the University towards reducing its environmental impact and implementing best practice. The EMS is based on the internationally recognised ISO 14001 and works in stages of accreditation.

Bronze is the first, then Silver, Gold and last of all Platinum. The idea is that the scheme gives you achievable targets to reach on a step by step process towards the final award which is the equivalent of the ISO 14001. So far only four universities have achieved the Platinum award and now we can say that the University of Greenwich has achieved its second major step towards that goal.

Sustainability Awards

Tuesday saw the University of Greenwich celebrate its first annual Sustainability Awards. To celebrate the progress the University has made over that last 12 months an esteemed selection of 45 people chosen for their contribution to the University’s sustainability effort were invited to Hamilton House for the event.

The event gets under way in Hamilton House

Neil Garrod lauds the efforts of the attendees in their contribution to sustainability at the University

On the agenda were speeches from the Sustainability Team, Charlotte Bonner from NUS green Impact Team, Neil Garrod Deputy Vice Chancellor for Resources and a presentation on ‘local food’ from Dr Howard Lee from Hadlow College. The main thrust of the speeches was angled towards the positive changes that had occurred at the University over the last 12 months and celebrating the impact that the people in the room had in helping bring about these positive changes.

A large part of the event was based around the achievements of the sustainability champions and to award them certificates and prizes for the work they had been doing on the Green Impact workbook. The workbook which had 22 tasks to complete for the bronze award, 15 for silver and 65 bonus tasks was attempted by all the sustainability champions. Since we launched the workbook an astonishing 561 tasks towards improving the University’s sustainability performance have been undertaken by the champions and their departments. These 561 completed tasks are the result of the hard work and determination of our sustainability champions, who have had to persuade, change and influence their colleagues and peers since the workbook was launched in October last year.

Overall 23 schools and departments achieved the bronze award, 1 achieved the silver and in turn won the gold award for the department that completed the most tasks. The golden department was the Natural Resources Institute (NRI), led by Caroline Troy, which completed a whopping 61 tasks in total. It might not be surprising that the NRI is leading the way with sustainability at Greenwich when sustainable development is at the heart of the NRI’s mission statement.

“Our mission is to provide distinctive, high quality and relevant research, consultancy, learning and advice in support of sustainable development, economic growth and poverty reduction.”

Caroline Troy receives her prize for bronze, silver and gold award in the Green Impact workbook.

Along with the awards to the sustainability champions there were a few special awards going around for people who had put in a particularly strong effort towards sustainability at the University. Ian Cakebread and Tony Dodson won an award for their excellent bicycle powered generators built for Green Week, Pru Jones received an award for her efforts towards recycling at the Medway campus (often as high as 70%), ABM Catering won an award for their move towards sustainable menus and Sustain won an award for their contribution to the Sustainable Food Policy.

There was one particularly special award being handed out which was the Sustainability Hero Award complete with FA Cup style trophy, courtesy of Glasdon UK, which went to Mary McCartney from the Business School. Mary won the award for the extra effort she put in over the year towards sustainability. As the only champion in the Business School she has helped get sustainability to the top of the agenda within the school which is now developing more programmes, employing more lecturers and more researchers with sustainability at the heart of what they do. On top of this Mary managed to get the 2^nd highest number of tasks done in the Green Impact workbook and fully deserves the award for 2011.

Neil Garrod awards the Sustainability Hero trophy to Mary McCartney

All the sustainability champions with their prizes

Following the awards everyone headed to Greenwich Park to enjoy a Sustainability Picnic laid on by ABM Catering. The menu was designed to showcase the best of the food on offer from the south east of England that we have available at the University. The menu included local cheeses, University of Greenwich home baked bread, cakes and scones and a selection of locally grown fruits.

Sustainability menu provided by ABM Catering

Enjoying the sunshine and the picnic in the park

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.    

People & Planet Green League 2011

Today the University of Greenwich rose to 5th in the People & Planet Green League table and was awarded a 1st Class award for its efforts over the last 12 months.

See the story on the Guardian website here and in the education section of today's (7th June) paper.

We are absolutely delighted with the result which has seen us rise from 103rd in 2009 and 61st in 2010 to our current position. We would like to thank everyone at the University who has been supportive of our work, who have been involved with the various projects and who make working at the University of Greenwich a real pleasure! Without everyone’s support and enthusiasm towards improving the University’s sustainability performance we wouldn’t have been able to make such a climb up the table.

Although today is a day for celebrating the achievements we have made we are keen to make sure that next year we are doing even more. There are still plenty more opportunities for the University to tackle issues of sustainability over the next 12 months and we are determined not to rest on our laurels and continue to push the sustainability agenda forward.

The People & Planet Green League 2011 reveals the environmental and ethical performance of 142 universities, awarding First Class 'degrees' to the best and Fail to those doing the least to address their impacts.

Nottingham Trent University takes the top spot this year and also in the top 5 with Greenwich are the universities of Gloucestershire, Worcester, Plymouth and Bournemouth (with whom we are tied for 5th place). We managed to obtain a score 47 points out of a possible 70, so despite our high league table finish there is still plenty more to be done.

The People & Planet website has a full breakdown of the scores and demonstrates the areas where Greenwich is doing well and the areas we need to improve on.

The results show major improvements across the higher education sector in 12 out of the 13 criteria used to rank universities and measure their transition to a fair & sustainable future – including:

• 8.3% increase in universities generating their own renewable energy on-site
• 57% of sector has put in place strong Carbon Management plans and climate targets
• 10% increase in energy-saving & recycling initiatives for students in halls of residence
• 10% increase in universities publishing Sustainable Food policies
• 20% increase in universities employing at least one Sustainability Manager
• 68% of universities have now achieved Fairtrade status

Louise Hazan, who compiled People & Planet's Green League 2011, said:

"This year's results show the sector is making a clear transition towards low-carbon, sustainable operations and responding to increasing student demand for greener universities that offer value for money. However, despite clear progress in the last year on issues such as carbon management planning and student engagement, the fact that carbon emissions are still rising should sound alarm bells for Vice-Chancellors and the Government alike”.

The Greenwich Sustainable Procurement Officer

Hello! The Green Gnome has asked me to use this blog to introduce myself – my name is Abbie and I’m the new(ish)Sustainable Procurement Officer at the University!

Abbie Curtis - Sustainable Procurement Officer Extraordinaire

I started a few weeks ago after being given just one weekend notice between my interview and my first day! Since then it’s been a bit chaotic – trying to understand the University’s complex procurement processes and work out how to most effectively communicate sustainable procurement to the hundreds of people that are involved in procurement decisions across all three campuses, as well as the thousands of companies supplying the University. I’m based in the Procurement & Business Services department which means that as well as successfully embedding sustainable procurement (fingers crossed!) I can constantly annoy colleagues about one-sided printing and lights being left on – brilliant! At the moment I’m finalising our first Sustainable Procurement Policy & Strategy so have a look out for that on our Procurement & Business Services webpages soon.

Before joining the University of Greenwich on this temporary contract I worked at a corporate social responsibility (CSR) consultancy. I was involved in dozens of projects right across the spectrum of CSR and sustainability including community, employees, the environment and supply chain. In particular I was fascinated by the complexity, challenges and opportunities presented by global value chains.

City of Bath

I completed a masters in Business & Community at the University of Bath last Autumn and my dissertation was on the takeover of Cadbury Plc by Kraft last year – an excuse to do lots of research into chocolate! Aside from chocolate, my interests include being a closet twitcher (Avery Hill’s Green Woodpecker and dozens of Chaffinches being my campus favourites so far) and utilising the UK’s marvellous public transport to visit friends across the country. Last weekend I went to a Eurovision Party in sunny Bournemouth!

Green Gnome's favourite act from Eurovision 2011

Green Impact Audits

Last week the University completed several days of auditing the different departments that had taken part in the Green Impact Universities project. The University's sustainability champions have spent the last six months implementing changes within their departments to bring about environmental improvements accross the Univrsity as a whole. Sustainability intern Stefano Maggi joined in the day of doing the audits at the Greenwich Campus and summarises the experience below:

Last Thursday and Friday, 5th and 6th May, the campuses of the University of Greenwich were audited for the Green Impact Universities scheme, a departmental accreditation scheme which encourages University staff to make changes at work in order to help reduce the negative impacts on the environment.

Collection point for used toner cartridges

As intern at the Sustainability Team of the University, I decided to take part in this interesting activity. I joined the team on 5th May, when the auditing took place at Greenwich and Avery Hill campuses.

During the morning, John Bailey, Adam White, myself and the other participants were introduced to the Green Impact project and trained by Joanna Romanowicz (Green Impact Project Officer at the National Union of Students) to ensure the quality of the auditing.

Collection for good on one side paper

The role of an environmental auditor is that to examine, check and evaluate the environmental performances of an organization through a semi-structured assessment. In practice, our task required us to visit University’s schools and offices in order to verify their actions in compliance with the Bronze and Silver Green Impact Workbook.

These workbooks provided us with the criteria that we used to evaluate the work of every department audited. Essentially, what we did was ask relevant questions for every criterion and request evidence to check compliances. Such evidence could take several forms like, for instance, communications sent to staff members, labelled bins, posters stuck on walls, printer settings, paper used in offices and so on.

The mentioned criteria refer to different environmental themes and issues of communications, recycling, electricity and energy, procurement and travel. When the criteria is not met, the auditor can issue a Compliance Action Request (CAR) which requires the department to address the outstanding issue and provide the auditor with suitable evidence within a week.

Office thermometer

Once the training was complete, we could begin the actual audit. John and Adam lefto to audit the Avery Hill Campus while Heather Lilliman, Joanna and myself took charge of auditing the Greenwich Campus.

We started with a collective assessment at the Accommodation Office of the Greenwich Campus after which I and Heather audited the Student Union, the ILS department and the Humanities and Social Sciences School. Throughout the auditing I could see that my University is really moving toward a more sustainable use of resources and a less harmful impact on the environment.

Posters promoting walk to work week and how to double sided print

For example, I noticed that most of departments/offices now induct new staff on significant green issues and encourage them to do their part from their first day of work. Furthermore, they make use of shut down plans, use stickers on light switches, draw up check-lists aimed at identifying energy saving opportunities and try to encourage colleagues to recycle. Finally, most of printers and photocopiers are currently set to duplex (double-sided printing) and the paper used is often recycled.

Environmental auditing training at the Medway Campus

So I can definitely say that the work of the Sustainability Team has been very effective so far and its members have been able to sensitize University’s staff awareness of environmental issues.

Personally, I found this opportunity very interesting since I could gain valuable experience and learn something new and useful. I am proud to study in such “green” academic institution and confident that the University of Greenwich will keep on improving and reach ambitious goals in the near future.