Environmental Sustainability at UCL

Over the past year, we have been reviewing our environmental sustainability impacts and preparing a strategy for the institution.

We invited the UCL community to provide their comments on the strategy and received a lot of helpful and supportive input. In April, the strategy was approved by the UCL Council and has formed the basis for our activity as a team and also for the institution.

The strategy is based on five core aims:

• Creating a sustainable campus

• Enable, empower and support UCL Communities to address their environmental sustainability effects

• To provide the education, advancement, dissemination and application of sustainable development

• To maximize the wider impact of UCL's environmental sustainability activities at local, regional, national and international level through collaboration, partnership and communications

• To be regarded as a leader in environmental sustainability across the HE sector.

To deliver these aims, we are undertaking work with the UCL Estates teams on refurbishment and maintenance projects, as well as developing new programmes for staff and student engagement. In addition, an online training course has been prepared for UCL Green Champions and the wider community.

There are several major issues and challenges which we need to address over the next year: reviewing our Carbon Management Plan and in particular, the targets and commitments; incentivising department and faculty action; reviewing opportunities for sustainable procurement; as well as completing our work on sustainable literacy through the HEA Green Academy.

To read the strategy and find out what is happening at UCL, please see our website.

Richard Jackson, Head of Environmental Sustainability, UCL Estates