Hello!
It’s Bec here! As you can see we have been a bit quiet over the last year on our blog as i’ve been on maternity leave where I had 9 months to enjoy welcoming our second little boy, Owen, to our family, joining our eldest, Oliver. However, we will be starting to post more often to keep you a bit more up to date with our sustainability journey at University of Salford!
Thank You Shaun and Laura!
Firstly a big thank you to Laura Bayliss who covered my position and also (slightly belated) to Shaun Wykes our Green Impact Project Manager who’s contract ended while I was off. Shaun led a fantastic year with our Green Impact programme last year. We had more staff and students involved than ever and some brilliant results.
This year an estimated 500 staff were influenced by the Green Impact programme with over 80 directly involved in a Green Impact team. These teams completed over 600 sustainability actions through the year resulting in energy savings such as 32,500kg of CO2e from ensuring printing was double-sided, 90,000kg CO2e from having a lighting equipment plan and 3,700kg CO2e from using the stairs rather than the lift. Just these actions result in approximately £27,000 of savings on our energy bill! In addition 27 students were trained as auditors for the scheme receiving IEMA accreditation, over 40 students were trained as Project Assistants working directly to support the teams and over 70 students volunteered for the first University of Salford Blackout – a campus wide energy audit carried out in March.
Laura continued the development of the Sustainability Strategy, including leading some consultation workshops and got involved with lots of engagement initiatives across campus, especially in partnership with our new caterers, Chartwells.
I thank both Laura and Shaun for all their hard work and enthusiasm and wish them all the best for the future!
What’s happening now?
Having had some time away from the role, it’s been the ideal time to refresh, rethink and refocus! We are almost ready to launch our new Sustainability Strategy which will give a roadmap to how we aim to become a more environmentally sustainable institution. We do recognise we still have to tackle the issue of how to better embed social sustainability into this to have a truly holistic approach but it’s a great start and will provide a platform from which we can develop further.
Our key Strategic Priorities in the map include;
* Managing carbon in our estate
* Building a culture of sustainable behaviours
* Positively influencing sustainability in industry and business
* Sustainability in learning and teaching
* Our leadership for sustainability
* Embedding sustainability through collaboration
The tools we will be using to help deliver and monitor our progress with this strategy include the LiFE tool and EcoCampus.
One of the main keys to our success is effective collaboration – this won’t be achieved in isolation, our University community needs to come along the journey together. A paradigm shift throughout the University is needed, we need to think in a different way, to challenge and change the way we do things.
The Sustainability Map supports the University’s vision
“By pioneering exceptional industry partnerships we will lead the way in real world experiences preparing students for life.”
Sustainability is a major concern to global industry and tackling sustainability issues is a global challenge. At the start of this year the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at an historic UN Summit — officially came into force. Over the next fifteen years, with these new Goals that universally apply to all, countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind. (UN, 2016)
The goals are a call to action, we can all do out bit. Now is not the time to rely on others to do it for us! As a University we are particularly well placed to take action to support these goals through our students, research and industry partnerships and our Sustainability Strategy Group will be looking at how to do this when we next meet.
If you would like to know more and how you can take action take a look UN Goals Take Action.
Always happy to chat more, please get in touch at r.a.bennett@salford.ac.uk
Bec 🙂