University of Greenwich Tops the People & Planet Green League 2012

The Sustainability Team are absolutely delighted to announce that we have topped the People & Planet Green League table for 2012. It is a tremendous result that we are extremely proud of at the University!

University of Greenwich Number 1 in the Green league

We were really pleased when we achieved fifth in the table last year and have pressed on working to improve in the areas we were behind in. Since the last table came out we have managed to achieve ISO14001 accreditation for our environmental management system, really gotten under way with some of our biodiversity projects, pushed forward our work to bring together the academics in the University who are teaching and researching sustainability related topics and have seen sustainability finally make its way into the University’s Strategic Plan.

Our Sustainability Champions Network has almost doubled in size since last year and the champions between them have tripled the number of tasks completed as part of the Green Impact project. Last year they completed 561 actions to improve the environmental performance of the university, this year it is over 1,500 – they have also been instrumental in communicating sustainability across the board and embedding it at a local level.

Our Sustainability Champions at last year's awards - this year we are looking for a bigger staircase!

As a result of our good position in the table last year there has been an increase in interest in and knowledge of the work we have been doing, and as the work that we are doing has spread further across the university we have found more and more willing collaborators and innovators.  There are some really exciting research and teaching projects taking place across the schools and offices in the University.

If it wasn’t for all the staff and students at the University who have taken these extra steps and really adopted the philosophy behind our sustainability strategy the result in the Green League would not have been possible.  We owe a lot of thanks to a huge number of people within the institution, a lot of people have played their part people such as our campus Facilities teams including our cleaners and porters dealing with energy, water and waste, the senior managers of the university supporting their sustainability champions, those who get their students involved in sustainability and those in the Vice Chancellor’s Office especially the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Resources- who has supported the ‘positive deviants’ that have been spotted roaming the university’s grounds?!

Positive deviant: a person who does the right thing for sustainability, despite being surrounded by the wrong institutional structures, the wrong processes and stubbornly uncooperative people. And doing it in a way that
brings other people along.
Extracted from: The Positive Deviant: Sustainability Leadership in a Perverse World (Earthscan 2010) by Sara Parkin.

Student volunteers have audited every nook and cranny of the campus, staff champions have got sustainability onto the agenda at hundreds of meetings and not a day goes by without someone at the University contacting us about an idea or an opportunity they have spotted for implementing sustainability in some way across the university.

Lots of new projects have been taking place including our Orchard planting last autumn

Our internal sustainability awards at the University in June will be attended by well over 50 members of staff and students which is testament to how many people there are working towards improving the University’s sustainability performance. It has been a lot of hard work but knowing we are making a positive difference, not only to the environment, but also for the staff and students that live, work and study at the University is the driving force behind the energy that goes into what we do.

P.S. If you haven’t read it – we thoroughly recommend that you read Leith Sharp’s paper on ‘Green campuses: the road from little victories to systemic transformation’. It’s from 2002 but still very relevant and if you’ve ever tried bringing about organisational change in a university it may ring true and for those of you who haven’t tried it it provides a great insight into the complex challenge!

So after a glass or two of Kent’s finest sparkling wine- please raise your glasses and celebrate all those working in sustainability – it’s back to work for the Sustainability Team here at Greenwich-  we still have a long journey ahead of us……

Two hives from one! Bees at Southwood House

Last Friday saw our bees at Southwood House in Avery Hill start a swarm and the formation of a new colony. The building services team spotted the bees gathering in a swarm underneath one of the two hives while doing a walk-round check of the campus. After a couple of telephone conversations with our beekeepers, John and Christine Hird (the beekepers for our Southwood House bees) decided to come and visit the bees and see what ought to be done.

Bees swarming on the bottom of the hive

John tries on some of the protective bee keeping clothing

When John and Christine arrived we donned the protective clothing and had a closer look at the swarm that was forming. Bees tend to swarm when they are looking to replace an older queen with a new one and is part of the reproductive cycle of a hive. The hive will create some queen cells and the queen will lay eggs in these, then the hive will stop feeding the queen so that she is lighter and more able to fly. When the old queen leaves the hive (sometimes taking as many as 60% of the bees with her) she will find a resting place while the scouts look for potential new places to form a hive. The scouts go off to look for new loactions and the new location is determined by the level of excitement the scouts communicate about to the hive. This process normally takes around three days and the bees tend to be non-agressive during this time as there is less focus on defending brood.

When we had a closer look at the bees it was clear that this is what they were doing but rather than let the scouts find a new home and lose the swarm of bees John and Christine decided to capture the swarm and place them in a new hive or a ‘nuc’. This would lead to us getting two hives from the one hive that had started swarming. To do this John opened up the hive and started to look to see if the queen was there and look for queen cells. As expected there were a few queen cells and no sign of the queen bee in the hive, this meant the old queen had left and was looking to create a new hive and the remaining bees were looking after the queen cells and brood inside to get a new queen for the old hive. After the hive had been checked we then went to capture the swarm in the nuc.

Checking the hive to see if the queen bee was still inside

Getting a closer look at the bees working on the cells

Normally bees would swarm in a brach of a tree which would then require a litte shake to get them to fall into the new hive but as they were attached to the bottom of the hive this meant we had to take apart the hive and get the nuc right underneath it – with a couple of bashes and a couple of brushes the majority of the bees were in the nuc. The queen went in and soon enough the remaining bees on the bottom of the hive started to diminish as they followed the queen into it. The nuc was then fitted with a couple of frames so that the new hive could stat to form cells for the queen to lay eggs and the hive to bring up some new brood and of course seal off some honey too!

Moving the bees off the base of the hive into the 'nuc'

The nuc - now with the swarm of bees inside along with the old queen