A sell-out audience of 100 from all departments of the University attended the Newcastle University Environmental Awards 2010 at the Courtyard Restaurant last Friday (4th June 2010).

Hosted by Professor Tony Stevenson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Planning and Resources) , the awards night was a evening of celebration to recognise excellence in the development, management and/or implementation of environmental initiatives at the University.

According to Professor Stevenson, the standard of this year’s entries was very high. “In the last few years, we have witnessed a continual rise in the improvement of our environmental impact. These awards are about recognising the good work that many people out in the departments are doing towards this aim.” he said.

The awards were presented by Vice Chancellor, Chris Brink

Categories

1) Outstanding individual contribution to the environment
This award celebrates the achievements of the University staff and student member, who best exemplifies a dedication to environmental issues within the University.

The staff award winner was Rob Dixon , with Maggie Tallerman and Susan McAllister getting the highly commended award.

Rob Dixon and VC Chris Brink

Maggie Tallerman and VC Chris Brink

Gemma Bone received the Outstanding individual contribution to the environment student award. Unfortunately she could not make it, as she is currently cycling through Turkey to raise awareness of climate change!

2) Outstanding environmental performance- group/ school/ department or business unit

This award is for the group who have shown they take the environmental impact of their operations seriously.

Winners- Library Green Group

The library green group won this award for the pride and dedication they have shown through out the year. New Rail and SCAN received highly commended awards

New Rail look happy with their award!

3) Best recycling performance

In partnership with Sita Waste Management. This trophy is given to the building which achieves the best recycling rate over the previous academic year. This was won by the Drummond building who have an average recycling rate of 62%- which is remarkable.

Andrew Young, Head of Administration, SAGE faculty accepts the award on behalf of staff and cleaners in the Drummond building

An award for the best performance from a cleaning team went to The Agriculture building cleaners, who took the Agriculture building from 29 to 72% recycling in a year!

Clare Rogers, Director of Estate Support Services, accepts the award on behalf of the Cleaning team at the Agriculture building.

The evening was also a chance for the Environmental Cordinators to catch up and have a bit of crack….

Ken and George share some opinions!

Elaine and Lyndsey (far right) wonder what to eat

Dermot Roddy, Science City Prof of Energy and Prof Paul Watson, Director of Digital Institute,

Susan Cook- Multi Tasking as usual.

Rob Bedford and Kelly Weightman share a joke

Tim makes a move for Matt’s sandwhich but he isn’t quick enough.

Thanks you to everyone who attended and made it a great evening. Especially Yvonne Lee for the military grade organisational skills and making sure everybody got there.

This blog post is about identifying mutual benefits and partnership building to encourage sustainable development. To make a good partnership you have to build rapport. To build rapport with someone you have to respect their needs, opinion and objectives. Partnerships between stakeholders are key to the achievement of sustainability.

Students are vital for sustainable development..in fact they are the Universities’ biggest opportunity to encourage sustainable development.

The universities based in the UK alone educate 2 million students per year- if those universities are teaching sustainable life skills, then this changes the ethos of nearly half an entire generation in just a decade!

Newcastle University promotes sustainability through its operations and a range of practical actions taken on campus to reduce environmental impact are increasingly linked to the curriculum.

We offer our composter for awareness raising, we lecture on sustainability issues and every year the Sustainability Team employ a graduate from the Clean Technology masters course.

This week we have two new student members who are working on important projects to reduce environmental impact: Adam White is working on the Eco campus EMS for the summer

Lucy Latham is investigating travel related emissions as part of the Carbon Management Plan.

For the first time this year we have been using the students to carry out audit work.

Ayo found a nice rose in the first bin they sampled!

In the forthcoming months, in partnership with the careers service as part of the graduate apprenticeship scheme, we are also employing a recent graduate to help with the Environmental Co coordinator network.

“It’s amazing what you find in the cardboard recycling.” said Ben Green

These types of partnership have numerous benefits. The students get real practical experience in environmental management, giving them a head start when they graduate. And the university gets a high quality piece of significant work which otherwise may not have been done due to resource pressures.

Ben Green, Adam White, Nisha Sheety try not to touch the nice car…

Sustainability requires active partnership working, so that the knowledge and skills emerging in the University community can have real impact beyond the campus as the students graduate and take their skills across the world.

just received the following pic from Deana Boulton the manager up at Richardson Road, halls of residence:

Accompanying the piccie was the following ‘A recycling string for cans – invented by students at Ricky Road for students!’

Not sure what they are getting…maybe it is a recycled firemans pole??

As usual the students are demonstrating that they are vibrant, creative, spontaneous and accepting of new ideas (and intelligent!).

What many people sometimes forget is that although students are ‘carefree’ they do care about the environment they live and work in.

It is always a challenge communicating to students and getting them to behave more sustainably on campus- they have alot going on (in their heads and social life) and our sustainability messgaes must compete with the tsunami of junk messages they get on a daily basis.

Therefore the approach must be as good as the best marketing! It should be FUN, clear and friendly. The approach needs to be innovative and fresh avoiding authoritarian and stuffiness.

here is an example from a campaign we delivered last year:

Information must be succinct and relevant. Therefore the tone and content of communications should change over time to suit trends.

And of course the student community is transient, so marketing has to be continuous.

And finally this was found on the roof of Ricky Rd accomodation last year..taken from a nearby park. Another example of student ingenuity. On viewing the photo Jennifer Molyneux remarked, “Do you think the students know something about climate change that we do not?”

I knew this already after organising many compost give aways over the last few years, but PEOPLE LOVE COMPOST!

Friday was the first day we gave away our campus processed compost

Here you can see some happy compost-ateers loading their bags up with the help of Paul.

It was really good to be able to give people compost for free as everyone seemed so passionate about it! We had about 20 visitors…and cleared about a half of compost!!…

All of the compost is produced by collecting the food waste from kitchens and commmon rooms across the campus. All of your banana peels, tea bags and sarnies get turned into compost by the Rocket composter.

One part of Paul’s job is to look after the Rocket and here we see him making some adjustments.

As long as staff and students want the material this offer will continue!

At the moment we have about 3/4 tonne of good/excellent grade compost left. I will update the grade of compost each week on the order form:

PS
I remember when my Dad used to take me to see Newcastle United, when i was very young and hearing about compost for the first time.

The police would be on horse back and you would see people putting the manure straight into bags and when I asked my Dad what they were doing it for, he told me about compost and growing leeks. I remember thinking they must really like growing leeks to put horse manure on it!

Our lovely Rocket composter is producing some amazing quality compost these days…Paul the operator has got the mix perfect.

I don’t want to shout about this too much but as a gesture of thanks, I want to make this material available to staff and students who require compost for gardens and allotments.

This will be a permanent offer which will continue indefinately. So no need to be in a mad rush to get it.

Please brings your bags with you. There are one or two spades for you to help yourself as well as a barrow.

You can collect compost from the Building Science Yard between 1.30-3.30pm every Friday. When you open this link ‘zoom’ out to get a better picture of where Building Science Yard is on campus.

To book your free compost please fill in the form here:

We have a new member in our recycling family.

Put your hands together and give a warm welcome to CERAMICS!

We are now able to accept ceramics for recycling- including plates, cups, jars, pottery, art works etc and anything else made of ceramics …(even tacky figurines!!).

If the ceramics are reusuable please advertise them on the reuse list: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/estates/services/waste/disposal/Furniture.htm

If broken: Please put any broken clean uncontaminated ceramics in the glass recycling containers.

Ceramics are processed in Bedlington by http://www.recycleitall.com/ to make aggregate for road building.

I am always amazed at the popularity, amounts and types of items that are advertised on the furniture reuse mail base.

The furniture mailbase has been running for about 18 months and it seems like it is a really useful service for those seeking furniture.

Everyone always says how useful it is and this is great…but, we do have a problem for those seeking furniture!

As soon as somebody posts an item, it seems like it is snapped up almost straight away!

For example: Martin in the Cassie building posted “Two banks of six lockers with own padlock” at 15.12 yesterday.

Then at 15.18 he then posted “Two banks of six lockers with own padlock. TAKEN by phone bid!”

This led to Tim Robson to comment “Crikey that was quick, who wanted them? Usain Bolt?!”

(If you do not know who Usain Bolt is check you tube here)

This actually happens with a lot of items, and most people know what it feels like to get gazumped on the furniture list (including me- which feels a little bit weird! !).

Even items you think that no body would ever want, get claimed- such as old china and even desk tidies!

With any items that are not “TAKEN” within 12 hrs I send a message out to 40 local charities.

This is a great service for charities and means that charities can spend what little money they have on helping others rather than on boring things like operators chairs and filing cabinets!

These operators chairs all went to a local charity saving them about 2K

In the past year charities have received all manner of goods. Your usual fare like operators chairs and desks but some unusual items like massive works of art and even a safe! Lever Arch files and stationery are also really popular.

Two large student works of art now hang in a charities foyer and another charities dinner hall.

Please let me know, if you know of a charity who would benefit from our office furniture.

Nothing much slips through the reuse net, but items that do end up at our central recycling area where they are broken up into timber and scrap metal for recycling.

It is challenging to find a home for old chairs lke this, so we split them up for their scrap metal and timber.

Sometimes porters are still called to departments where staff have not used the furniture mail base…for example 20 of these were sent for disposal last week- and they looked as if they had never been used.

So some people are still not using the system. If you get a chance please spread the word in the admin and building management corridors!

I will try to make using the furniture reuse mailbase easier in the coming months as I think it is still a little clunky, especially for new members. If anyone has any bright ideas let me know.

if you are not member of the list please send an email to sympa@newcastle.ac.uk and copy and paste the following into subject line: SUBSCRIBE furniturereuse YOUR NAME.

See details here: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/estates/services/waste/disposal/Furniture.htm

Thank you all for making this system useful for the institution and local charities.

Daniel
Waste Manager
222 3963

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With the massive drop in temperatures last week something has suddenly jumped up everyone’s agenda…ROOM TEMPERATURE!

Room temperature is a term to denote a certain temperature in buildings at which humans are accustomed and comfortable.

Room temperature is thus often indicated by general human comfort, with the common range of 20 to 25 degrees Celcius.

However some people are comfortable at different temperatures which can cause some issues in offices.

For example you might have “warm” people and “cold” people in your office. Further confusing the issue at the University, climate may acclimatize people to higher or lower temperatures which is a problem for our overseas staff and students.

For human comfort, desirable room temperature greatly depends on individual needs and various other factors such as height, weight, whether or not circulatory problems exist, and overall health.

This is why in an office of 10 people you might always find one or two people that are too warm or too hot at the same temperatures.

This is a great challenge for us in the sustainability team as we try to ensure that as many people as possible are comfortable without having to resort to personal heaters.

We try to discourage as far as possible the use of personal heaters because they are very high users of energy.

George also says “The warmest parts of a room are away from the windows, so put “cold” people away from the window and “warm” people next to the window.”

If you experience temperature issues on your work area remember to dress in layers. If you are too hot take layers off if you are too cold pop layers on.

If you have regular problems with the temperature in your room and would like a temperature strip monitor for your room please email saveit@ncl.ac.uk

We are going out of our way to encourage students to behave more sustainably this year.

We have developed a Student Engagement Strategy with lots of interesting activities being planned.

One of these activities was delivering a campaign at the start of term in all of the halls of residences. We worked with accomodation services to deliver a co ordinated campaign where the main messages were to turn stuff off and recycle! Pretty simple really.

These photos show some of the flavour of the campaign:

We are developing a new electricity use campaign called “Switch off 2010!”

The main message of the campaign is to switch off electrical items when not in use- especially when staff leave for home!

The target audience is mainly staff and we will be hitting a building per week every week starting in January with the “Switch Off 2010!” campaign.

When developing any communications we have to consider our target audience and what response we desire. We need to explore: what language to use, how to use it, what material will be engaging, what will prick the awareness bubble, what will drive action…Etc etc.

Every sentence and what it infers is poured over and debated! This has been especially hard this time as it is the first time the whole team has been involved in one project.

The “slog” on this communication has highlighted again to me how much I enjoy the creative process when you are producing communications. It is really challenging to get everybody’s opinion into the content and then finding a compromise that 1) people are happy about but 2) still gets the desired response from the reader.

Our communications content usually start life as a bit of work someone has strung together. The whole team then breaks it down until we are happy with it. This means lots of passing around on the email and meetings etc.

There have been a few versions of the current communications leaflet we are working on because we kinda over engineered it to start with……then we reviewed it.. then we went to the Futerra masterclass …. and we reviewed it again!!!!

The next step is to market test the 1st draft for feedback- so we will be passing this to our 70 odd Environmental Co ordinators before next meeting for feedback….and it could be back to the drawing board! Yoikes!

Any hoo here is our draft before it goes to the printers to prepare a pdf for environmental co ordinator to comment on. (our printers Alphagraphics are very patient and produce excellent results from our scribbles!)
Dan