Submitted by Grainne Kennedy on Mon, 2016-06-27 13:08
The Environment and Energy Section hosted the University's fourth Green Impact award ceremony on 2 June, to celebrate the achievements of 43 teams in making the University more sustainable.
It was a great year for Green Impact at the University of Cambridge, with a record number of departments and colleges represented. Between them completed 2,174 actions to ‘green’ their places of work and study. Their efforts were supported by an online workbook and a number of support workshops, which helped them to identify areas for environmental improvement. These improvements ranged from cutting energy and water use through to raising staff awareness and improving biodiversity. While making tangible environmental improvements and saving energy and resources is the main goal of Green Impact, the awards also saw some teams embracing the fun side of ‘going green’, through group cycle rides or holding wacky jumper competitions. This year some teams also spread their sustainability impact outside of their own offices by doing things like running fundraising charity events, installing birdboxes, and working with student societies. Peter Lumb, the University’s Environmental Coordinator, said;
"what has been so great to see with Green Impact this year is how it has brought together a whole range of people from across the University who are so passionate about delivering environmental sustainability improvements in their own places of work and study – from lab technicians to counsellors, scientists to finance staff, and administrators to managers."
With the awards being in their fourth year, a new award was introduced for teams who had achieved the highest ‘Gold’ award and wanted to go even further. ‘Excellence’ awards were presented to five teams who had run their own larger projects throughout the year, and included a student-led initiative to deliver a sustainable May Ball, two projects working on cutting energy use by freezers, a project looking into encouraging more sustainable food and a project to improve the use of pool bikes.
As well as the Green Impact awards, the awards ceremony celebrated the work of a few special people and projects who went the extra mile as part of, and alongside Green Impact. Fiona Riggall from CISL and Emma Cook from Obstetrics & Gynaecology department were both presented with awards for their continued work on environmental issues in their departments. Two students, Amy Carmichael and Patrick Lundgren won recognition for their environmental leadership. Three projects were also commended for their innovation, including an energy-saving server relocation by the Chemistry department, a paper-saving electronic application scheme at POLIS, and an energy-saving change to the heating system at Clare College.
Presenting the awards was Dame Fiona Reynolds, former director-general of the National Trust, recipient of a CBE for services to the environment and conservation, and Chair of the Green Alliance, who said:
"It was a joy and a privilege to hand out the Green Impact awards this year’ said Fiona. ‘Each team, whether from colleges, departments or the central university, showed passion, dedication and determination in helping their part of the University to pursue a greener future. A thousand small actions add up to real progress, and some of the actions are not small: each year we see more and more clearly how being green is not only good for the environment but good for business and great for engaging the thousands of staff, students and academics in thinking about our collective future."
Visit our website for full details of all the winning teams and individuals, and stay tuned for next month’s Greenlines newsletter which will feature the work of Green Impact’s Excellence teams! Please get in touch if you would like information about how to take part in Green Impact next year.