The Annual Sustainability Awards 2014

On the 7th November the Sustainable Development Unit hosted its Annual Sustainability Awards to celebrate the achievements of the those taking part in the National Green Impact projects as well as other sustainability achievements. Below we announce the winners, share their achievements and say thank you for their efforts.

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Green Impact Bronze Award

The Bronze award in Green Impact is awarded to those who have completed all the Bronze criteria within the Green Impact workbook. This is often the hardest section to complete as you have to set all the ground work going forward and get people on board. The winners of the Bronze award 2014 are:

Information and Library Services – Chris Gallagher

Student Union University of Greenwich – Ana Lopez

Information and Library Services Drill Hall Library – Jim Skinner and Jody Belcher

Accommodation Service Greenwich – Heather McGlinchey

Humanities and Social Science – Kathryn Holt

Vice Chancellor’s Office  – Elizabeth Bell

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Pictured right to left: Chris Gallagher, Ana Lopez and Jim Skinner

Green Impact Silver Award

Building upon the Bronze the Silver award requires departments to engage senior management, create a sustainability pledge, and actively involve students in sustainability within their department. The winners of the Green Impact Silver Award are:

Information and Library Services Mansion Library – Carol Rostek

Greenwich Research and Enterprise – Lara Everest

Recruitment and Admissions are awarded Silver with Honours  in recognition of the department going beyond the Silver criteria – Alice Coyle

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Pictured right to left: Carol Rostek, Neil Cormack-Bissett representing GRE and Alice Coyle.

Green Impact Gold Award

To achieve the Gold award departments must complete all three awards section and often they go way beyond this with some extraordinary actions.

The winners of the Green Impact Gold award are:

Human Resources – Liz Laurence and Anna Radley who achieved Gold and set up a project with the local foodbank that allows University staff and students to donate food and other items to support their community.

The Office of Students Affairs  – as well as coordinating the first triple Gold from across all the campuses OSA have been instumental in the annual Swap Shops that take place as part of Green Week.

Greenwich – Norma Powell, Sara Ragab, Jenny Peart and Edgar Pereira Gutierrez

Avery Hill – Amanda Hatton, Julian Murphy, Adeola Napthal, Paul Rees and Sophie Clements

Medway – Angela Ware and Yvonne Pendry

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Pictured from right to left: Liz Laurence, Norma Powell, Jenny Peart, Amanda Hatton, Julian Murphy, Paul Rees and Angela Ware.

Green Impact Platinum

The Platinum Award is awarded to the department that goes above and beyond by not only achieving the Gold award but building upon this by completing many of the bonus criteria.  The winner of this award went as far as completing every cirteria that they were eligble for! The winner of the Green Impact Platinum Award is:

Natural Resources Institute – Caroline Troy

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University of Greenwich is one of over 50 HE Institutions taking part in the NUS national project of positive behaviour change.

Green Impact Excellence

The Green Impact Excellence scheme is designed to help high achieving departments that are wanting to step out of the Green Impact workbook and design their own projects. The Excellence projects have set to receive their final awards however, they were celebrated and thanked at the awards ceremony to highlight their great efforts. Below is a summary of some of the projects they have been working on:

The Business School – Mary McCartney, Sonia Mankad, Nithya Gopalakrishnan, Emma Gates, Sarah Sheikh and Amanda Bicott.

The Business School have been working on a number of projects to reduce inefficiency and move to paperless operations where possible. They have also been seeking to ensure that every new student in the school has been inducted into sustainability.

Natural Resources Institute – Caroline Troy and Roman Zipaj

The NRI have developed and Environmental Management Information System website that will allow all those involved with managing environmental risk and processes a one stop shop for everything they need. The website can also be used for Sustainability Champions to share resources. The website is now moving into the testing phase by different user groups.

Facilities Management Medway, Engineering Department and the Partnership Division – Richard Cottam, Wim Melis and Geoff Hallam

A partnership between perhaps an unlikely group of departments but linked by location and sustainability. These departments have started MedSAT (The Medway Sustainability Action Team) with the aims of helping sustainability projects and ideas progress with proper support and funding to ensure the longevity of the projects and good sustainability outcomes for the campus and the University.

Thank you to everyone who has taken part in Green Impact Excellence and I look forward to working with you on completing your projects.

Green Impact Laboratories Gold Award

One of the specialist Green Impact Workbooks is the Laboratories workbook that focuses on reducing the environmental impacts associated with high use laboratories. The 2014 Green Impact Laboratories Gold award goes to:

Natural Resources Institute 

Green Impact Catering Gold Award

The second specialist Green Impact Workbook is the Catering workbook that focuses on reducing the environmental and social impacts associated with high use catering outlets. The 2014 Green Impact Catering Gold award goes to:

Sodexo led by Paul Harvey and Lorraine Hudson

Loraine Hudson from The Dome, Avery Hill

Loraine Hudson from The Dome, Avery Hill

Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Development at the University of Greenwich 2014

This award does not come around every year and is awarded to departments who have gone beyond anything asked of them and who hold sustainability as a core value of their strategy. This department have driven sustainability forward not only in their own department but through their mission.

The winner of the Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Development Award is:

Natural Resources Institute

“NRI’s mission is to discover, apply and share knowledge in support of global food security, sustainable development and poverty reduction”

With special mention to the following:

Natalie Morley – “Going beyond her role as a laboratory manager, Natalie has made a positive impact at NRI and has taken on the responsibility of embedding sustainable behaviour within NRI’s labs. She has worked consistently to change operational procedure through recycling furniture for the labs, purchasing recycled lab consumables and recycled stationery whilst encouraging other departments at NRI to purchase the same, and trying to introduce peat free compost into NRI’s greenhouses.”

Charles Whitfield – “While still a PhD student with very limited technical time, Charles Whitfield was responsible or a major refit of both the NRI glasshouses and insectaries which is intended to significantly reduce energy usage in these power‐hungry areas. The renovations were a team effort between FM and NRI staff, but the continuous driving force for the project was Charles. During the planning stage, he carried out extensive research to ensure that there would be significant reductions in energy use while ensuring that the practical needs of NRI would not be impaired and costs would be reasonable.”

Sarah Arnold and Simon Springate – “Sarah and Simon  run short bee walks in the Medway area. For anyone interested in learning a bit more about bumblebees – and other insects – near the Medway
campus Simon and Sarah give up their own time to conduct short bee walks (approx. 1 hour) at the Lower Lines Park, Gillingham. The events consist of an informal walk around the Lower Lines Park (with all its wealth of historical interest as well as fantastic biodiversity), learning about the wildflowers, bees and other wildlife living in the park and how to identify some of them.” Please find out more by emailing medway.bugs@gmail.com.

Frances Hawkes –  “Frances is a PhD researcher at the Natural Resources Institute, and is the first winner of the University of Greenwich ‘Student of the Year’ award. The energy she put into the
University and the community of Medway has contributed to improving the University’s environment, the well‐being of local children and the community as a whole. In‐between her studies Frances co‐founded the Universities at Medway Students’ Association (UMSA) Environmental Society, where she lobbied for a full‐time sustainability officer and for allotment facilities to be provided for students.”

Caroline Troy – Caroline is the driving force of sustainable actions within the NRI. In her role as a Sustainability Champions she has inspired colleagues, students. fellow champions and the Sustainable Development Unit. She has seemingly endless energy for sustainability and has been a valuable support for the Sustainability Team who would love to steal her away from the NRI and have her work with them! A personal thank you from myself as Sustainability Projects Officer to Caroline for being a constant source of encouragement and positivity when things are not always going to plan.

There are other individuals and projects from the NRI that we hope to showcase through the blog over the coming weeks.

Environmental Hero 2014

The final award of the afternoon was our annual Environmental Hero Award that is awarded to an individual or group of individuals who have made a big difference often out of nowhere! It also exists to reward those to have stuck it out and continued to strive for positive change despite barriers being put in their way.

Our winner this years as stormed onto the sustainability scene joining the ranks of Champions half way through the Green Impact year and leading her department to a Silver with Honors award.  She has also made a big impression at the Avery Hill Edible Garden and her input there has been invaluable.  It has been a pleasure to get to know her over the year and the Sustainable Development Unit were extremely pleased to award the Environmental Hero 2014 award to:

Alice Coyle

Alice accepting her Environmental Hero Award.

Alice accepting her Environmental Hero Award.

Thank you  once again to everyone who has taken part in Green Impact and who has contributed to the Sustainability efforts at Greenwich.

For more information on the Green Impact project at Greenwich please contact the SDU at sustainability@gre.ac.uk

 

Sustainability Awards

Last week saw the University of Greenwich celebrate its Sustainability Awards for the second year running – the awards bring together staff, students, volunteers and outside organisations that have helped the University in the world of sustainability over the last 12 months.  This year’s event had an extra bit of sheen as the University was also celebrating coming top in the People & Planet University Green League Table published in the Guardian newspaper.

Following requests from the sustainability champions we decided to create a whole day’s worth of events and really give those that had been involved over the last 12 months an experience where they would be able to enjoy themselves, learn something new and feel empowered and energised to take their sustainability efforts to the next level. In the morning we invited the sustainability champions to the lawn at Southwood House where we separated into two groups and headed off to one of two workshops.

Jennifer leads the first group on a forage of Avery Hill

One workshop took the champions on a short walk around the campus led by Jennifer Patterson, from the School of Education, to see what could be foraged from the hedgerows on site. We found a multitude of different plants, some with medicinal qualities and others that fell under the category of ‘tasting good!’ We found marsh mallow Althaea officinalis, red clover Trifolium pratense, elderflower sambucus, fat-hen Chenopodium album and white deadnettle Lamium album among the bushes and hedgerows, some of which made it into a delicious salad prepared for lunch!

The other workshop was led by James Hallybone from Roundfield, who have been designing our community garden, to create a ‘showcase’ raised bed made out of willow and planted with perennial fruits and herbs. Starting with a pile of willow sticks, enormous piles of compost and soil and a few small plants the results by the end of the day were spectacular and a sign of how hard the sustainability champions had worked during the workshops!

James points to the soil and exclaims, 'Make me a raised bed!'

The finished raised bed

Lunch followed, with a delicious spread laid out by Sodexdo, including the foraged flowers, herbs and salad leaves picked in the morning. At this point we were joined by many more members of staff from the University, from members of the senior management team, that we have worked with to secure funds and get agreement and support for university wide projects, members of the Student’s Union, who we will be aiming to help achieve a first Green Impact Student’s Unions award, and staff and students who have been involved in projects from the ISO14001 accreditation to the community garden and everything in between.

Our delicious menu for the day

After lunch we headed out of the sunshine and into the David Fussey building where the Sustainability Team gave a short ‘Prezi’ on what it had taken to get to the top of the Green League and what could almost be described as a sustainability call to arms from Deputy Vice Chancellor Neil Garrod. Neil was looking to impassion and inspire those that were in the room to focus their efforts on sustainability and not to give up or rest on their laurels after the successes of the past few months.

Lunch under the 'marquee'

The awards presentation followed with the sustainability champions collecting awards for each of their departments (see list below for who won what) and a few special awards for people who had been driving sustainability in particular or specialist areas over the course of the year. One award which deserves a special mention is the ‘Environmental Hero’ award for the person who has gone above and beyond the call of duty and really pushed sustainability. This year the winner was Caroline Troy from the NRI who completed more tasks in the Green Impact workbook than anyone else for a second year running, was the only sustainability champion to complete the Laboratories section of the workbook and had also been working hard with the carbon management team to re-vamp the glasshouses on the Medway campus making them much more energy efficient!

Following the awards we had a presentation from Luke Nicholson of Carbon Culture to show some of the pioneering work they have been doing with government departments to encourage behaviour change and deliver carbon savings. The group of champions, staff and students then worked together to come up with ideas and challenges that we could focus on in the next 12 months – giving us a good way to round up the session that had celebrated looking back by looking forward and picking off some of the sustainability actions and targets for next year!

Green Impact Awards:
Working Towards Accreditation:
Procurement (Ian Husson)
Greenwich Facilities Management (Caroline Churchill)
Bronze:
Architecture, Design & Construction (Gesche Heubner)
Computing & Mathematical Sciences (Guy Penwill)
School of Education (Yana Tainsh)
School of Engineering (Ian Cakebread)
Office of Finance (Yuri Panton)
Greenwich Research & Enterprise (Lara Everest)
Vice Chancellor’s Office (Miriam Lakin)
Silver:
Accommodation Office (Heather Lilliman)
School of Business (Mary McCartney)
Central Facilities Management (John Bailey)
Guidance & Employability Team (Ed Paxton)
Human Resources (Anna Radley)
Medway ILS (Karen Worden & Lynn Finnemore)
Medway Student Centre (Angela Ware)
Planning & Statistics (Karl Molden)
Recruitment & Admissions (April Moore)
Avery Hill Student Centre (Amanda Cappuccio)
Student Helpline (Helene Pirsch)
Welfare & Student Support (Sherry Hosein)
Health & Social Care – Psychology (Jim Demetree)
Office of Student Affairs – Executive (Norma Powell)
Gold:
Alumni, Public Relations & Communications (Vicky Noden)
Medway Facilities Management (John Bisbrown)
Avery Hill ILS (Carol Rostek)
Marketing (Fiona Bradley)
Student Finance (Amanda Hatton)
Student Records (Julian Murphy)
Student Records Systems (Sophie Clements)
Platinum & Labs:
Natural Resources Institute (Caroline Troy)
Special Awards:
Student Participation – Sarah Sheikh, Mary McCartney & Business School
Team Award – Avery Hill Porters
Lance Armstrong Award for Cycling – Simon Earp & Neil Garrod
Carbon Reduction Award – Nigel Heugh & Building Services Team
Education for Sustainability Award – Jennifer Patterson
Volunteer of the Year – Linda Marie Schroyen
Championing Biodiversity Award – Chris Powner
Creative Communications Award – Vicky Noden
Positive Deviant Award – Ian Cakebread
Innovation Award – Jim Demetree
Green Transport Award – Guidance & Employability Team
Unsung Hero Award – Sue
Team Award – Portering Team
Hosepipe Ban Award – Grounds Team
Department of the Year – Office of Student Affairs
Environmental Hero Award:
Caroline Troy

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 2nd 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