Green UCL

Students living in UCL halls have made a great start in the Student Switch Off energy-saving campaign, taking simple actions to reduce their carbon footprint and helping their hall in the competition to save the most and win an end of year party.

Over October and November the leading residence Frances Gardner reduced its electricity consumption by 6% compared to its average use in previous years and across the five participating halls (James Lighthill, Astor College, Langton Close, Frances Gardner and Schafer House) 7766 Kwh and 4.19 tonnes of C02 have already been saved, the equivalent of boiling nearly 250,000 cups of tea!

Saving are the results of students engaging in a range of activities, with over 200 signing up to receive regular energy saving tips by email, over 150 having a go at our online climate change quiz and over 200 attending pizza parties that launched the campaign at the beginning of the year.

Forty students also attended a volunteer training session learning how to use peer to peer communications and social media to create environmental behaviour change. They have taken these skills back to their halls to get their friends to start taking actions like putting lids on pans when cooking and only boiling the water they need for their tea and coffee. Representatives from Student Switch Off have also visited the halls to chat to students and keep awareness high, while throughout the year there have been lots of opportunities to everybody to win prizes as rewards for their energy saving efforts.

Tapping into the power of social media is a key part of the campaign. Over 100 students have joining our facebook page - www.facebook.com/uclstudentswitchoff – where they share photos of themselves saving energy in return for cinema tickets, free bowling and probably the most popular prize, tubs of Ben and Jerry’s! Over 100 photos have been shared, which have gathered over 300 ‘likes’. As people like and share the photos and posts the energy saving messages have reached to over 2000 people across facebook.

The campaign continues until the end of the academic year and the other halls have the chance to put in an extra energy saving effort and try and overtake Frances Gardner be crowned the energy saving champions.

Jesse Scharf, Student Switch Off Project Officer, said “I’ve been really impressed by the enthusiasm that UCL students have shown in getting involved. It provides a heartening example of the responsible attitude the next generation of young adults have towards our environment”.

Pictured: Susie Woodbridge of Langton Close wraps up warm.