Submitted by Grainne Kennedy on Tue, 2019-06-25 17:26
The Living Lab has been busy again this year. A large number of students and academics have got involved in projects on the University’s estate. All the students who’ve been involved were celebrated at the Living Lab Celebration Event at Trinity Hall on Tuesday 11 June. At the event we heard about a number of academic and voluntary projects looking at topics as diverse as sustainable food, arthropod diversity on University sites and polystyrene recycling. The final presentation was given by student Verner Visaiinen, and described his experience of our flagship student engagement programme Engage for Change.
The Living Lab has focussed largely on sustainable food and biodiversity work this year. One of our most exciting projects looked at assessing the impact that the University’s sustainable food policy has had on reducing carbon emissions. In October 2016 the University introduced a new sustainable food policy which removed beef and lamb from University cafeterias. Two recent graduates found that this policy has resulted in a 33% decrease in carbon dioxide emissions per kg of food purchased. We are now working on sharing this best practice with others.
Figure 1: Sustainability display in University Centre
On biodiversity a further group of students carried out a project at Madingley Wood. This project looked at how invertebrate biodiversity differs between Madingley Wood and the 800 wood next door. The 800 wood was planted in 2008 to mark the University’s 800th anniversary whilst Madingley Wood is an established piece of woodland. Whilst the students did find a reasonably diverse community in the 800 wood the invertebrate community in Madingley wood was much more diverse. This suggests that it is worth preserving these more complex established ecosystems as they are able to support more diverse communities around them.
The Living Lab has also supported a number of internships over the past year. Interns have assessed the University’s emissions from business flights, developed our staff and student engagement strategy and completed a biodiversity baseline report. Our most recent intern, Catrin Darsley, mapped where sustainability is currently being taught in the curriculum. She also began conversations with teaching staff in a variety of departments about how sustainability could interact with their teaching material.
Finally, this year marks the end of our first full year of supporting Engage for Change. The programme is a student coaching programme run by Cambridge Hub, empowers students to lead environmental change in their departments, colleges and lives. More than 40 students have now taken part in the programme and have run a huge number of diverse projects with many going on to lead new environmental projects. For example, Verner, who spoke at the Living Lab celebration event, went on to work with a group of students to set up an environmental volunteering programme, Cambridge2Environment, which partnered with local charities to provide volunteering opportunities for students.
Figure 2: The Lent term cohort of Engage for Change
Overall, it’s been a diverse year and a complete joy to see and interact with so many students who are passionate about, and dedicated to, improving sustainability at the University.