We launched a lug a mug campaign last week. Blog post to follow. But this is the first public sighting of one in use!! Woop.

A little while ago we had a great deal of polystyrene to dispose of. Big massive polystyrene blocks.

We were going to send it off for recycling but via a contact in fine art we heard of an artists who was on the look out for “Big massive polystyrene blocks.”

8 trips by our porters- pulling out all of the stops- managed to get the material over to Theodore Harper-Davis on new bridge street, new bridge SPACE. The new gallery just opposite the new city libary.

Theodore sent us some up date pictures. I do not know where he is going with this but it looks very interesting. More images to follow soon!

More mutually beneficial partnership work…

We run a part time internship programme each year in partnership with NCL+. Placements last four or five months for a minimum of half a day a week.

What are the benefits? It is a great opportunity for Newcastle University students to work in a fast-moving, creative environment geared towards making sustainable change happen on the campus. And the Sustainability Team gets high quality meaningful project work completed. Without the interns this work would have to wait until the resources became available.

Interns are allocated to one of the sustainability team’s areas of work and occasionally we recruit interns to work on specific project work also.

We love our interns, they are a crucial part of the team and vital in helping us achieve our aims. We make their time with us stimulating and rewarding. We fully encourage them to become part of the team contributing to meaningful work, attending meetings, brainstorms, events, and generally get all of the experience required to make a head start in the sustainability businesses.

All interns have regular meetings with a dedicated line manager to discuss their personal development and progress.

We’re proud of our interns and we hope that they go on to change the world.

We have 7 interns working for us this year and we also have other students picking up smaller one off projects.

Temp intern positions

The Waste Management Intern, works to improve recycling and reduce the amount of waste produced on campus.

We have two analyst interns. One working on energy use and the other on waste production. They are tasked with setting up systems to monitor, record, analyse and interpret the energy used and waste produced on campus, leading to higher efficiencies and cost savings.

We also have two EMS interns. The University is in the process of implementing EcoCampus, an Environmental Management System (EMS). The interns are developing University environmental objectives, targets and procedures. This role suits graduates who know that they want to work in environmental management and auditing.

The Student Engagement Intern- helps to develop communication campaigns and networks to encourage students to take responsibility for their actions towards energy, waste travel and water issues.

The Environmental coordinator intern stimulates action on sustainability issues across the University by helping to support the objectives of the EC network. The volunteer would assist in the development of communication plans for energy and recycling, developing initiatives, organising events, developing and designing publicity literature.

It is not all glamour though and they have to muck in sometimes doing the boring stuff like preparing meetings or data entry, but they don’t get stuck doing anything boring for very long.

What we’re looking for
If you want to work with us to make the campus sustainable then you need to have an interest in it what we do. You should be studying towards a sustainability/environmental/marketing Degree or Masters and be able to show us that you are involved or interested in sustainable development and have a desire to create change.

For starters you’ll have read our webpage and various communications and you’ll have seen our blog and our twitter and have friended us on FB. You will probably also be part of our Green Student Network.

We are recruiting for interns for next year so please send a covering letter explaining why you want to be an intern and CV to hannah.munro@ncl.ac.uk

The next blog post will be written by our current Student Engagement Intern….

The challenge is competing with the ubiquitous junk messages to acheive meaningful engagement to change behaviour.

We use many different techniques and media to communicate to people and sometimes it comes down to the basic face to face persuasion and blatent bribary!

As part of the Recycling roll out 2008 and the Switch Off2010 campaign we have carried out clinics and workshops as a form of awareness raising and communications. However the problem we face is that we always attract the people who are already ‘on board’ and are already acting sustainably on campus.

A typical person who is onboard will recycle all they can and switch off all they can!

How do you attract those who are not interested? You incentivise them with goodies or trinkets- or a bribe if you like.

How do you ensure the transaction is meaningful and not just grab and go? The act of giving away something of value can create an opportunity for a bit of face to face rapport building. However, more often than not people snatch what they want and scarper – so any giveaway should be branded with a logo to act as a retrieval cue.

The give aways should be valueable and useful so that they are desired AND attract people AND get used in their normal working life.

Tat or “low quality useless cheap nasty product” is not good for anybody, so there will be no stress balls, yo yo’s or whistles at any of our workshops!

This type of promotional item are a waste of valuable resources and especially in these times of austerity they give out the wrong message on all counts.

Over the years I have tried lots of different incentives- from boring but useful key rings to some items that are quite useful. I once branded 10,000 veggie peelers in a home composting project. There are also a few ‘out there’ ideas which never made it to the purchase order – such as the whoopee cushion to publicise student green house gas emissions. (An idea i would still like to go ahead with but need some open minded partners to share costs! Get in touch please.)

The king of incentives is food. As part switch off 2010 we actually provide a free buffet lunch as part of the communications mix. The good thing about food is you can actually stand and engage properly. As people eat you can tell them all about your messages. And while you have a nibble they talk about their issues. Great two way rapport building.

The important thing about incentives is that they have to bring value to a person’s life. If they are poor quality or useless then they bring a negative association to your brand/campaign. And of course always specify for recycled content.

Lever arch file reuse is a great example of a waste minimisation initiative. We have been doing this activity for the last year or so on campus.

As we transfer and store more and more data into electronic format, lever arch files are slowly becoming more redundant in office life.

Every year we get 5000 students who need lever arch files for their course work. Times are hard, lever arch files are expensive (about £3-4 P), so as you can imagine there is a definitive opportunity to reduce waste in this scenario.

This is how we collect lever arch files

We distribute lever arch files from cages in a spare garage on campus. We did try it inside building foyers but it gets a bit messy, as people generally don’t put files back neatly.

Follow the trail….

Happy students say “We just saved £ 15!”

Neil Addison and Steven Hogg, from procurement were passing when I was taking photos. They were ecstatic that we were putting waste to good use and reducing waste spend.

Incidentally a full lever arch file costs about 4p to dispose of in general waste on our current waste contract- last week we had a garage full, which would have cost about £25 to dispose of..now it is empty. So file reuse saves the University money as well as students.

Kay has just started with us and will be assisting the 80 strong Environmental Co-ordinator (EC) network with their environmental objectives.

The role of EC is integral to reducing University environmental impacts, contributing to the effective delivery of environmental objectives. They communicate environmental policy and provide a link between operational sustainability, schools and services, share good practice and encourage and motivate other staff.

ECs meet quarterly and we have a really strong group however; ECs feel they did not have enough support and many ECs comment that a building user groups (Eco teams) for ECs would be helpful.

For these reasons, the Sustainability Team have developed the EC Support Officer (ECSO) role.

Kay will be with us temporarily for 6 months and will be helping all of the ECs as well as pushing forward the EC Strategy.

Kay has already hit the floor running and is well embedded into the team and well on with the workload.

She came in this morning and immediately set off the medical school to help with preparations for Switch Off 2010.

Kay will be a great addition to our team and MWH‘s loss is our gain.

if you are an EC you can book Kay’s time here.

“Got. Got. Need. Need. Got. Got. Got. Got. Need. Need. Need.”

This is the high pitched cry you would have heard if you were listening carefully in any playground in the 80s as various groups of boys flicked through their Panini sticker collections trading stickers to complete their sticker albums.

Such as Fergie Circa 87:

Since then, stickers have always held a massive fascination for me and this has carried on in my working life. Jeanette Trewick , building facilities supervisor, calls me the “sticker man” due to the amounts of stickers I issue to cleaners for bins and the like.

Stickers are fun…but serious. Cheap. Flexible. Effective. Removable. Up datable. And are great for numerous other reasons….

On a professional level they are a million times better than the handwritten note or the laminated print out..which give facility users a terrible impression. I still see too much of the “home made sign” . ..and is mildly upsetting (for me!) especially when you go to great lengths to design a nice sticker!!

URGH!

A nice smart clean sticker applied straight and with no creases has high impact!

Retrieval Cues

Stickers are maybe best employed as retrieval cues.

Marketers use ‘retrieval cues’ to remind shoppers in supermarkets about the adverts they saw on TV the night before. If you are trying to change habits, it is no good convincing someone just once. You need to remind them exactly when they are taking the action you want to change.

Retrieval cues are any stimulus that helps us recall information in long-term memory. So you tell someone to “switch off” at the start of the year during a energy campaign, then 6 months later you can put up stickers reminding people of the campaign using images colours of branding to remind them of what they have learned already.

A few of the retrieval cues used on campus

Practical

Overall stickers are just another way of communicating your message. But, you can be as creative as you like . They are a fun, cheap way of delivering a bespoke message. They are flexible, can be put up and took down without any maintenance issues.

We all make sticky mistakes though….When it comes to making stickers for bins make sure they are vinyl wipe clean please! As tatty paper stickers soon fade and really spoil the moment!

The recycling service that we deliver at the University has been recognised nationally in the letsrecycle.com awards for excellence in Waste Management.

We received notification that we were in the running for an award and so a team from the University went down to London to in the hope that we might win!

The Estates Support Services, waste management infrastructure is delivered by over 350 people at the University. All of us could not go down so we had a prize draw to see who would go on the trip. The lucky winners were Muriel, Surinda, Trevor and Jason.

We had a great trip down on the train and did a brief bit of sightseeing before having a champagne reception and then taking lunch at the Landmark Hotel.

Trevor and Jason were representing the porting team. With Muriel and Surinda Sekon represented the cleaning teams and Rob Walton of GPS represented the Environmental Coordinators. And i went along… just to make sure no one got into any trouble on the mean streets of London City.

We were in the category for Commercial Recycling Champion. Unfortunately we did not get the overall winner but came a very respectable runners up. Shirley Kidd, BP North Sea HQ got the overall winner… so well done to Shirley!

We met a lot of people from the waste industry and had some drinks afterwards before making the journey home. A great day out was had by all….the streets were not paved with Gold though!

Tony Stevenson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Planning and Resources) presented awards to Cleaning Team following the Newcastle University Environmental Awards 2010.

Below we see is Rob accepting the award for Best Recycling Performance. Rob’s team had the best average performing building with a rate of 62%. This is an outstanding achievement and on one day of an audit the Drummond building only produce 3 bags of general waste!!

And in this pic we see the team from the Agriculture building accepting their award for best Cleaning Team Performance for getting the Agric building from 28% to 72%!! This is something special as the 72% has been maintained into the next quarter.

Saw this and thought “eh?!”