UCL Sustainability Awards 2018: Libraries making a difference

The event was hosted by Richard Jackson (Director, Sustainability in UCL Estates) and Professor Geraint Rees (Chair of the UCL Sustainability Committee and Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences). Professor Rees presented awards to the teams which participated in the Green Impact scheme in 2018.

The awards are split between ‘office’ and ‘labs’, and special awards can be granted for projects. Awards rank from Bronze to Platinum, with an additional ‘Excellence’ category.

The Awards were achieved as follows:

• Gold – Completing the individual workbook as set out
• Platinum – additional 20 points
• Excellence – additional 40 points

In addition, the School of Pharmacy Medicinal Garden was granted a project award.  

Each team received a Blue Planet 2 inspired Sustainability Awards trophy. Artist Joanna Atherton created these sculptures out of plastics found during beach cleans. Congratulations to all the staff who were involved in improving our sustainability this year, and particularly to colleagues across sites who contributed to the department’s 14 successful entries to the Green Impact scheme this year.

Library Services as a department achieved Gold for the first time. Well done to our library colleagues and student volunteers for a fantastic result! The Library Sustainability Committee hopes to extend the awards to all library sites for Green Impact 2019, and we welcome any project ideas. If you want to get involved or find out more, please contact the Chair of the committee at benjamin.meunier@ucl.ac.uk.

The Green Impact scheme is continuing to grow at UCL as more and more teams participate from across the university. As noted above, Library Services has performed very well, and for the first time the department as a whole was awarded a Gold award. Green Impact is also competitive, in a good-spirited way – UCL’s PALS Green Impact Team have consistently been the best-performing department at UCL. They shared the first prize in Green Impact in 2018, as joint winners with the Office of the Vice-Provost (Advancement). Can Library Services do better next year? The answer depends on each of you. During the event yesterday, there was a lot of emphasis on how small steps, individual actions, might seem trivial in isolation. But when those small actions are multiplied by 350 Library Services staff, or 50,000 in UCL’s community of students and staff, collectively those actions make a big difference.

Ditch the disposable

And finally, to try and reduce the 1 million single-use cups which are thrown away every year at UCL, since Monday 03/09, UCL outlets are pricing single-use cups separately. So save money by using a reusable cup on campus!