Tag: Green League

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!