Right this is not good- we have now had 3 people leave our team in as many months! Kay has left us to go back home to Nottingham. Ed- who looked after our EMS, was offered a graduate trainee scheme with Tesco- which is an opportunity he cold not turn down….

Ed second from Left and Kay- far right..have both left for pastures new

..and now James who was Ed’s “understudy” has been offered an amazing opportunity with Loughborough University- working on a 4 year Sustainable Construction EngD. This leaves us sad and a bit paranoid…only kidding, we know we are a great team to work with – it’s just we support and nurture our staff too well that they get headhunted!!!

James is leaving us after completing his MSc dissertation and helping steer us to EcoCampus gold standard.

This means we now have an opportunity for an Environmental Management Graduate Placement.

Newcastle University Sustainability Team is looking for a suitably experienced graduate for a 5 month student placement.

Salary is GBP 15,353 per annum pro rata

The graduate should have some experience in practical implementation of Environmental Management Systems.

The placement will mainly involve taking a leading role in the development of our EMS, EcoCampus (with guidance).

Please send a CV and covering letter outlining your experience in EMS implementation and why you are suitable for the role.

Please see below for the job description.

THE ROLE IS AVAILABLE TO FILL NOW. Closing date Friday Sept 30th

Please include mobile phone number in the application as interviews will be held at the start of October.

More info about the sustainability team and eco campus here: www.ncl.ac.uk/saveit

Job description

Eco campus Environmental Management System

Newcastle University

Student placement project (Platinum phase of Eco campus) EMS Officer

Main purpose

Support the function of the Estates Support Service by developing the EcoCampus Environmental Management System

Main duties and responsibilities

Implements the EMS, specifically the operating and checking phases (equivalent to phases 4 and 5 of BS8555)
Completes training plan for all staff.
Develops training delivery in conjunction with Staff Development Unit.
Develops operational control procedures in line with objectives and targets.
Communicates roles and responsibilities of EMS to staff.
Develops a procedure for documenting EMS procedures.
Develops a system to ID and respond to environmental communications and emergencies.
Completes the EMS Manual
Begins audit planning and developing monitoring procedures
Conducts internal EMS and operational audits
Attends weekly meetings to progress the EMS

Dimensions

Providing help and support to the Eco campus EMS implementation team.
Carry out desk based work, interviewing and external research and investigative work.
Attend external forums, networking groups and training sessions.

Knowledge skills and experience

Good working knowledge of Environmental Management Systems
Numerate and literate
Good working knowledge of MS office
Good interpersonal skills
Planning and Organisation
Weekly reporting to the EMS management team
Assisting in reporting to the EMS implementation team, including senior management
Manage own workload
Uses initiative and works well to deadlines

Internal and external relationships

Liaise with staff of all categories.
Attend workshops training and network events facilitated by Newcastle University and third parties.

Please contact:

Daniel O’Connor | Waste Manager
daniel.oconnor@ncl.ac.uk
T: 0191 2223963
M:07807070339
F: 0191 2226276

Congratulations go to the Newcastle University Sustainability team for being shortlisted for the inaugural BusinessGreen Leaders Awards 2011.

BusinessGreen Leaders Awards 2011 received a great number and quality of entries so it really is a fantastic achievement to have made the shortlist. The shortlist for each category highlights the genuine leaders in the emerging low carbon economy and will present the panel of esteemed judges with an extremely difficult task as they attempt to agree on the eventual winners.

The winners will be announced on Thursday 7 July 2011 at the Merchant Taylor’s Hall in London.

Lucy came into work yesterday on her bike. She usually walks, but on this occasion the sun was out, the wind was light and she was all over it, like white on rice.

There was one problem…the bike didn’t feel right…she struggled with the pedals, “what is wrong dear shopper- something feels awry”.

“Never mind” she thought, I will soldier on, out of Jesmond and into the city “Hello!” she cheered buzzing off the cycling and the summer vibes. As she cycled past the dog walkers..still feeling a bit out of sorts.

Arriving at work (early), her curiosity was piqued to such an extent that she asked Matt, the Energy Manager (and ‘core cyclist (20 miles round trip daily) to take her look at her bike at dinner time.

Turns out the last person who had rode Lucy’s bike had really long legs and set the height of the seat to maximum.

Here they are fixing the problem.

Lucy is now a very happy cyclist with a comfy seat.

Spotted this bin related heart break incident. When these bins were born in a factory somewhere, they had a glorious life set out in front of them. They were told they were going to England to be recycling bins- To help Newcastle University divert waste from landfill and recycle.

Imagine their joy when they arrived here and were given nice stickers and placed proudly in corridors and foyers to heroically collect recycling.

Now imagine the shock and horror when they were swiped away in the night and put to work as general waste bins. A sad end to a long journey….but can they be rescued from this artsy trade? Find out soon…

It is one of the first days of spring, the clocks have changed, the daffs are out and Geordies are swapping their winter “t-short” for their summer one. I am riding down to the Centre for Life downhill from the campus with the wind in my barnet and a massive grin on my face . I am riding on one of the lime green chunky Scratch Bikes that have been a feature of the Newcastle University campus for 6 months.

Funky and being green do not always go together- so we are lucky this is Newcastle and people are open minded and are used to stylish icons.

Bicycle sharing systems are schemes in which bicycles are made available for shared use by individuals who do not own them.

The bike share movement has some major benefits- Cycling is also promoted as a viable means of transport with the subsequent health benefit and reduced emissions. As people sharing a resource it means there is less consumption, less waste and less costs.

Newcastle has a newish bicycle sharing system called Scratch Bikes, it has been running since last summer/autumn and it has been set up by two of our very own students on a shoestring budget. No mean feat in these hard economic times.

Inspired by the cycle schemes they had seen across Europe, Robert Grisdale, 24 and Jack Payne, 23, realised the potential to translate the idea into something more suited to students. After graduating from Newcastle University with degrees in Civil Engineering, they decided that university self-service bike hire was an opportunity too good to ignore.

Scratch Bikes have received a few awards already

Bike share schemes are all the rage with most cities currently considering one. But it is not cheap- London and Leeds have had millions pumped into their schemes. And they are not without their problems- the Paris one found that users would leave bikes at the bottom of hills- and there are the obvious theft issues.

The boys said “With a more modest budget than any other scheme of its kind, Scratch Bikes were forced to take a fresh look at the self-service bike hire concept and use their creativity to find a solution that would work. They have stripped away some of the complexities and focussed on user experience. Their objective is to try to create the perfect journey for students. Focussing on getting from A to B in the easiest, and most fun way.”

Scratch Bikes HQ actually got their office furniture from our furniture reuse scheme

Review of the service

I suggested my department at work, Estate Support Service could use scratch bikes to get around campus to save time and promote health and well being. We would also be helping to support Scratch Bikes and so increase the use.

The following is a positive review with a few recommendations for improvement. My main recommendation is that this is somethign that all organisations who have city mobile staff could use this scheme and get numerous benefits. I personally support it wholeheartedly

Scratch Bikes offered me a free trial and I have been using scratch bikes for a month. I have to travel around the campus and to outlying sites regularly. The bikes are robust and sturdy with chunky tyres suitable for the mean streets and pavements of the campus and Newcastle environs.

The seat is super comfortable with plenty of padding for bottoms and adjustable in height. There is also a cute little bell- which I am surprised has not become a target for little magpies. Each bike comes complete with a sturdy lock which you take with you. This fits conveniently around the frame.

The bikes are easy and comfortable to cycle and surprisingly, not having any gears, the hills are not too bad. I have travelled to the far flung reaches of my waste manager galaxy taking in meetings at Campus for Ageing and Vitality and Centre for Life and have arrived at meetings early with no sweat (taking it easy), fresh, bright eyed and bushy tailed with a clear mind. I have never been splashed or got muddy and have avoided getting wet (planning required).

The time savings add up. It takes 30 minutes to walk to the hospital usually. On Scratch Bikes that is halved. Which means I can fit more in my day.

I now use the bikes for short trips as well. Even just going from Kensington Terrace down to Culture Lab saves 15 minutes in total on the round trip.

There are only a few down sides with operation. The possibility of wet seats, a requirement for a satchel for paper work and the locks can be stiff – all easy to overcome obstacles.

Rob has told me ” The existing seats will be replaced with seamless seats in the near future. This will stop moisture seeping into the padding and causing wet bums on rainy days.” and ” Sometimes the locks can be a bit stiff which is why we are stepping up our lubing efforts and replacing locks which are past their best.”

The system of booking in your time on the bike works in the main. There are some improvements that could be made- but remember this is just the start. Great ideas do not just appear they develop out of a number of different ideas.

A critical mass of participation is needed if Scratch Bikes is going to take off. To get a critical mass you need easy participation. Easy participation comes down to being user friendly in the extreme.

At the moment it is not really easy to participate. I think this is mainly down to the technology scratch bikes are using and this has a knock on effect to the rest of the service. However this has something to do with the budget i suppose!

The text message service is not 100%, on two occasions I did not receive my reply text with the lock code- I waited but in the end had to walk the distance. All other journeys were fine though. This is not the end of the world but people expect a service to work.

However Rob did say ” We plan to introduce a back-up system for when the code is not received within 30 seconds. The format of this is not yet certain but we’re working on it.”

The main message of this review is scratch bikes have made a great start- there is a great framework there for community leaders to look at and support and roll out Version 2 across Newcastle. But Scratch Bikes need to make the service more accessible by improving the technology used (Smartphone and social media integration), improving the communications and offering wider variety of payment plans.

Rob has mentioned “A free sign up option (casual use) and a subscription option (full membership). Casual users will be able to start using ScratchBikes for nothing but pay a bit more per rental. Alternatively, users will be able to sign up to a full membership. For an annual subscription fee, full users will be able to use the bikes for a nominal fee.”

Bike schemes are actually struggling in other large cities, there are reportedly only 70 trips a day being made on Melbourne’s brand spanking new public bike hire facility and Boris bikes in London do not seem to have taken off either.

I think this is a great service which belongs to us all. It is a commonly owned system which is very useful. I think we have to get behind this scheme to support it. I think all large city based organisations should use the system for getting about the city- even for short trips. When it reaches a critical mass of users it will take off and become a permanent feature of the city.

Attracting some big attention

Bigger picture observations

The biggest positive for me about the scheme is that it shows that people’s attitude to ownership is changing. You don’t need to buy a bike any more- you can share one. This has massive environmental implications which are increased as people learn to share and change their ownership attitude.

This is a movement which is gathering pace. Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping reinvented through network technologies on a scale and in ways never possible before. From enormous marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist, to emerging sectors such as social lending (Zopa), peer-to-peer travel (Airbnb) and car sharing (Zipcar or peer-to-peer RelayRides), swap trading, time banks, local exchange trading systems (LETS), bartering, social lending, peer-to-peer currencies, tool exchanges, land share, clothing swaps, toy sharing, shared workspaces, cohousing, coworking, CouchSurfing, car sharing, crowd funding, bike sharing, ride sharing, food co-ops, walking school buses are all examples of collaborative consumption which is changing traditional consumerist business models.

Newcastle is the most sustainable city in the UK and needs a citywide cycle scheme. Everyone else has one or is looking at one. Scratch bikes is a great start towards that aim- the system needs refinement but we have the basics for the city. If the right support is given I think these bikes will grow to become part of the city.

A local artist Theodore Harper-Davis, has used some of our surplus polystyrene for an art project.

This is the second blog post about this project. For more infor see previous blog entry.

I asked Theodore what it was all about and he said

“My work investigates ideas of suffocation and isolation through material, surface and form. I attempt to challenge the familiar with the unfamiliar, creating contradictions that through my language work in harmony by constantly questioning one another.”

Theodore went on to emphasise how his work engages with the audience. “I seek to reveal the world we live in providing new perspectives on our human relationship with our contemporary environment through the medium of sculpture/installation.”

Drawing attention to the fact that he is taking waste resources and putting them to another use he went on to explain his interpretation of resource use, consumerism and recycling:

“The materials I use are mainly sourced/recovered from our natural/urban surrounding that have either lost their use or no longer have any place. The material is often in a raw state, and has no form prior to my investigation. Because of this, the work always holds on to a strong sense of origin.”

I think what Theodore is doing is a commentary on how waste is not really waste, but something that is useful (an asset , a resource) but in the wrong place.

Theodore is still at the initial stages in this project and so i am looking forward to further developments

Our A900 composter has started to tweet about life being a composter. Rodney wanted to tweet about his life because he has a lot of fans, from within the University and throughout the UK, who are interested in what he does. So he wants everyone to understand the intricacies of how to process food waste to produce compost. You can keep up with his adventures here: http://twitter.com/ColinComposter

What do most coffee drinkers think about when drinking a cup of coffee? For a group of Newcastle University students, it’s the environmental impact of their coffee cup.

As an alternative to the single use cups the students suggested encouraging the use of reusable thermal coffee mugs on Newcastle University Campus.

Available in a variety of eye catching colours, each costs just £1.50 and as an extra bonus for using your travel mug at outlets on campus you get 10p off your tea or coffee.

In April last year, a group of MSc Clean Technology students conducted a waste audit across the campus in collaboration with Newcastle University’s Sustainability Team. They investigated the composition of waste being disposed of on campus and found a repeat offender was the disposable coffee cup, which were present in large quantities in the waste destined for landfill.

Disposable coffee cups not only damage the environment through the requirement of raw materials for manufacture (paper, plastic and energy). But, also once used are generally disposed of as general waste that goes straight into a landfill, despite the fact that they could be recycled.

A study conducted by Sustainability Engineer Pablo Paster shows that a stainless steel mug will ‘break even’ in environmental impact with a paper cup after 24 uses. Considering that most stainless steel mugs are designed to last for 3000 uses, the positive effect of reusables is clear.

Tony Stevenson PVC for Planning and Resources at Newcastle University said: “Never wanting to pass up the opportunity to reduce waste on campus, the Sustainability Team in partnership with Accommodation and Hospitality services are now offering thermally insulated travel mugs.”

The mugs are available in limited numbers from The Bistro, The Courtyard, The Forum, Bites at the Dental School, Campus Coffee and the cafe in the Robinson Library.

Available in a variety of eye catching colours, each costs just £1.50 and as an extra bonus for using your travel mug at outlets on campus you get 10p off your tea or coffee. This saves you money, reduces waste production and ensures you always have your favourite mug and a warm drink with you at all times.