I am proud to work for one of the UK’s most sustainable universities, but I know we can always do more. The next opportunity is always there to be taken and it’s been great to see a rise in the commitment of both our staff and our students over issues important to them.
Whilst our research delivers greener sources of energy, food supply and construction, and our campuses use solar energy and have carbon neutral buildings we continue to use a huge amount of plastic across our campuses. We know we can reduce this this significantly — and we are engaging with our staff, students, visitors, suppliers and partners to establish what we should do – and how big our ambition should be.
We know that not all plastics are ‘bad’. Indeed, plastics have been a fundamental part of advances in medicine, construction, technology, transport and much more. But we also know that there are significant opportunities to reduce the use of unnecessary single-use plastics — such as coffee cups, bottled drinks and other everyday items that we use once and then throw away.
We bin more than 1 million disposable coffee cups and 1.1 million plastic drinks bottles a year across our UK campuses. Quite frankly, that’s astounding. We know we can do better. We know that everyone can make a difference by making small changes to their choices and lifestyle. By raising awareness and providing easy-access alternatives, we think we can make a big difference.
We’re developing challenging institutional tasks and targets for reduction, but we can only achieve those with the support of our students and staff. We have set up a survey to help us decide what we should focus on — and how you would help us to accomplish our goals. It takes less than six minutes, but will provide us with the feedback we need to define what we do next.
With 10 days to go we’ve already had well over the 2000 responses – phenomenal! It shows just how much interest there is in the subject. Our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Shearer West, said:
“Our research has a well-deserved reputation for supporting a more sustainable planet in developing greener sources of energy, food supply and construction. It is only right that our investments and campus activity reflect this.
“We have recently committed to fossil fuel divestment within 12 months. Taking the next step in reducing single-use plastics on campus is an important part of our global outlook, ethical values and commitment to environmental sustainability. I invite our University community of staff and students to help us continue our drive to become ever more sustainable.”
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