New Member in the Sustainability Team: Meet Emily Crockford

Hello all! I am Emily Crockford and I will be working alongside Kat and John as a sustainability projects officer for Greenwich. It is great to be working for Greenwich and to be back in London and I am excited to be involved with all the fantastic projects happening here.

My love of all things environmental started with my love of the book, ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Amongst my teenage love of Legolas the elf there was one moment that really stuck with me: when the Wizard Saruman orders for the trees of Fangorn to be chopped down to fuel the fires of war I remember thinking that it was all an incredible waste, and so the seed of sustainability was planted!

Legolas hear's Emily calling!

My background is in wildlife conservation after studying my degree with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent; and I then went onto an internship and volunteering with the RSPB on their London Parks House Sparrow project. If there was one thing that I learnt from other conservationists and in my time trying to conserve wildlife it was that climate change was probably going to undo all our good efforts! It was this that finally nudged me over into sustainability and back to the University of Kent to run their Green Impact project for two years.

Emily Litter Picking

Green Impact is a behavioural change projects aimed at staff to increase their pro-environmental behaviours. The same scheme is run at Greenwich so if you have not heard of this before or think you would like to take part get in touch with us and we will tell you all about it.

While at Kent I also took on the role of Environmental Coordinator for nine months which meant I covered a range of sustainability projects from promoting Fairtrade produce to writing procedure for the ISO 14001 environmental management system. Working in sustainability within Higher Education is extremely satisfying as the range of projects available means there is a lot to get stuck into. I have also found that the diversity of people to engage with makes the whole job a lot more interesting.

At Greenwich I will be predominantly working on carbon reduction, especially in regards to engaging staff and students with the carbon management plan. The University of Greenwich has committed to reducing our emissions by 30% (from our 2009/2010 baseline) by 2015/2016 and it will take everyone’s input to hit this target. If you are interested in how you as an individual can help please do get in touch, and I look forward to meeting and working with you all!

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