Various members of our team were at the Societies Fair on the 22^nd and the 23^rd of September. It was really exciting meeting and chatting to so many freshers! Welcome to Newcastle! We talked to over 400 students, handing out our (free!) reusable water bottles, pens and key-ring bottle openers to everyone.

Our aim for the Societies Fair was to talk to as many students as possible about sustainability and put our name out so everyone knows about the Sustainable Campus. For anyone who missed us at the Fair, we were also giving out our sustainability guidance comic strip and signing students in halls up to the NUS Student Switch Off, which is a great competition with prizes for your halls of residence. To find out more about Student Switch Off visit http://www.studentswitchoff.org/.

So what are we doing in the coming months?

• We are running monthly sustainability campaigns when we will focus on one of our specific areas of work (biodiversity, energy, procurement, carbon, transport, water and waste).
• Each month there will be a newsletter available to everyone who’s interested about the upcoming activities, events and national days.
• There will also be regular events run throughout the year to support national sustainability days and weeks.
• We will continue to increase our social media presence (with the help of even more student volunteers!) to keep you all informed of how to get involved and what exciting things we have coming up.
• We are currently signing students up to take part in Green Impact, a great scheme, which will look really good on your CV! We need you to support a team within the university to help them achieve sustainability goals. You’ll be a Green Impact Project Assistant, receiving training from NUS and  Change Agents UK for the role. If you’re interested the training will take place on Wednesday 5th Nov 13:00-16:30 in the SU (room TBC). Please fill in this form if you’d like to come along http://forms.ncl.ac.uk/view.php?id=6883!

We’re two third year students working with the Sustainability Team and would like to give you an overview of what we’ve been up to and what to expect from the Sustainability Team over the next couple of months.

At the moment, we are in the middle of sorting out some lovely merchandise to hand out during Freshers’ Week 2014. We are planning to attend both the Societies’ Fair and Defresh and look forward to seeing lots of new Newcastle University students there. As well as giving new students freebees, our growing team will also be on hand to answer any questions and provide information on what we do.

Last week we went around visiting various University Departments in the pouring rain. Bedraggled, we were trying to convince University Staff to think about joining the NUS scheme Green Impact. If we missed you (the rain was bad) – then feel free to come along to one of the two launch breakfasts at the end of August. Dates to be posted soon. We spent a day with a lovely woman from NUS learning how students help out and drive the Green Impact scheme – they are crucial to the project and we’re hoping more students will apply to help out this year. It’s a great experience and looks good on that all important CV.

Social media is one of our ongoing tasks. We are trying to increase student engagement and interest for environmental issues and events. Hopefully you’ll see us popping up online. Check out twitter @NuSusTeam. In addition our website is under constant renovation – we’re adding content, organising photos and making sure the page is in great condition for the academic year 2014/15. Have a look at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sustainable-campus/ and tell us what you think?

Come along and get involved:

• Staff and Students – every Tuesday 8am-4pm – go see Doctor Bike for any cycling repairs
• Staff – when arranged – Nordic Walking sessions available: email Rebecca.Allen@ncl.ac.uk
• Staff – end of August – coffee mornings to launch Green Impact
• Staff – 4^th September – cycle to work day
• Students – September 22^nd and 23^rd – come and see us at the Societies’ Fair
• Students – September – sign up for Student Switch Off (sponsored by Ben and Jerry’s)

Best wishes – Jo Evans and Steph Hoare