September 26, 2012, by sustainablenottingham

Start as you mean to go on

Keep Calm and Go Green pen

Kay Cocks, Energy and Environmental Officer, describes the Sustainability Team’s plans for Week One and beyond.

September is a busy month for any University with the rush to get everything ready for the return of the students – and the Sustainability Team is no exception. Aside from making sure we have enough recycling bins, and finishing off cycle shelter installations, the Sustainability Team use the new academic year as a launch pad to engage students in environmental sustainability, mainly raising awareness of our services, like the Ucycle bike scheme, and encouraging greener living behaviours, like switching off lights.

Excited at the prospect of ‘no parents’, with new friends to be made and parties to be attended, it can be hard to engage with students from the onset, but we have a variety of tools up our sleeves to raise environmental awareness in ‘Week One’.

Not only do we include sustainability in the student inductions in halls of residence, incorporating a short peer to peer film on green tips for UoN living, but the Go Greener Halls Competition now kicks off the academic year with a special Week One prize, before it continues throughout the terms.

It’s important that we practice what we preach, so the Sustainability Team take the environmental approach. At freshers’ fair, we are proudly stood at our stall, enticing students into learning about sustainable practices here at the University with a variety of ethical freebies: a pen made from recycled plastic, a hessian bag, and a biodegradable plastic water bottle. And the snappy tag-line to give these items a cult following? Keep calm and Go green – thought up by one of our very own students. Include the url of our new webpages, and we have a recipe for active student engagement in the University’s sustainability agenda, that will form a strong basis for our continued engagement throughout the academic year.

After all, who doesn’t love an environmentally sustainable freebie?!

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