Caroline Troy: Being a Sustainability Champion

Today Caroline Troy, Sustainability Champion for the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) takes over the blog. Caroline was our most industrious sustainability champion last year and managed to achieve the Green Impact gold award – this year she has attempted to go for Gold again in the workbook and has been completing the newly added ‘Labs’ section for making the department’s laboratories more efficient. Despite making Green Impact and being a sustainability champion look easy Caroline explains that there are a few challenges to be faced along the way…

Caroline Troy at her Graduation Ceremony

“Being a Sustainability Champion is not an easy job. Some of us were ‘volunteered’ into the position and until you are participating in the scheme you don’t really understand how much work is actually involved. When I took on the role of sustainability champion I had no idea what I was letting myself I for!

First of all you have your normal day job to do. And then when you have some spare time in the day you get to try and achieve a little good within the University. It’s really not easy. Sometimes you feel like you are juggling far too many balls and at any minute you will drop one, sometimes more than one! Everyone in the department carries on as normal and you often feel like you’re bashing your head against a brick wall trying to persuade them to participate to make the University greener.

However I have learnt a great deal. I’ve gained new skills and knowledge and I have used Green Impact and my role to work towards an MA. NRI began with small actions to improve our ‘green’ status within the University. We cancelled our bottled water contract and encouraged staff to drink tap water, we keep track of who travels where and by what means – whether in the UK or overseas – and we have been looking into off-setting our carbon emissions, we also collect data on who our visitors travelled to the campus, our management team meeting has gone paperless, we print publications/invoices/leaflets on recycled paper, and we have participated in Green Week, Climate Week and Fairtrade Fortnight since the beginning of 2012. In addition we are working on making our laboratories greener including looking at projects to improve the energy used by our greenhouses and controlling the energy used by our CT suite. But there is still a lot more to accomplish.

My biggest learning curve as a sustainability champion over the past two years has been that I now know I can encourage people to participate and make a difference but I can’t make people join in. I have also learnt that positive communication goes a long way to persuade staff to do their bit. When I started this process I thought if I talked about a green task enough people would get the idea, either through nagging or over-enthusiastic persuasion. But unfortunately it doesn’t work like that, it is about changing people’s habits and the way they do things. I have learnt I need to be patient, and I can’t do everything at once……..or change the world in a day!

There are days when everything goes well, people are responsive and helpful, and willing to participate – and that makes up for all the bad days. When you can see that you are making a difference those are the positives to hang on to and continue moving forward slowly but surely.”