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UCL Sustainability Challenge winners announced

3 March 2016

The UCL Sustainability Team and UCLU Green Economy Society are collaborating to run termly sustainability challenges, designed to create real solutions to pressing sustainability issues at UCL and in the wider world.

The Research Channel
This term's challenge was to 'develop an intervention, project or strategy to allow students to tap into the expertise of UCL academics to shape their sustainability campaigns, advocacy or social enterprises.'

We received a huge diversity of responses, reflecting a wide range of ways to tackle this challenge. Using the criteria of: ease of implementation, innovation and the likely effect of bringing students and staff together to tackle sustainability, our judges chose:

Highly Commended - Nathaniel Greenwold: 'the research channel'. Nathaniel proposed the idea of setting up a Youtube channel to showcase UCL's sustainability research. This would be made up of 2-3 minute videos of researchers talking about their work, with these videos shot by students. The judges felt that Nathaniel’s idea would be quite easily achievable and could help provide an effective and engaging way to make UCL’s sustainability research more accessible to students.

Winner - Anna Hands: 'GreenConnect'. Anna set out an ambitious proposal for ‘GreenConnect’, a network of students and academics at UCL, alongside seminars and quizzes to keep the community engaged. The judges said that Anna created an excellent, well-structured response that definitely met the competition brief in terms of helping to link up students and staff. A poster for Anna's idea can be viewed below.

 


All the entries for the Sustainability Challenge:

Give them a clap

Give them a clap

 

George and Ben's proposal for an energy-saving campaign

Alex Horn - Estates department should use 100% electric vehicles: Alex proposed that all UCL Estates vehicles should be electric, lowering carbon, costs and acting as a positive news story for the University. 

Bevin Ng - UCL Growing Project: Bevin proposed a growing project to turn unused space into 'quiet oasis' in the middle of UCL's campus, helping to foster a sense of community around gardening. 

Fatumina Said Abukar – 'Humans of UCL Green': Fatumina proposed (and created) an Instagram account in the style of ‘Humans of New York’, with a focus on showcasing the sustainability motivations and ideas of members of the UCL community. 

Feysa Poetry – UCL Study Hub: Feysa created a stunning visualisation of a new app to help students find study space and adopt more sustainable behaviours. 

George Munday and Ben Steyn – ‘Give them a Clap’: George and Ben created an entertaining and engaging campaign to engage students and staff with energy saving behaviours. 

Josh Bailey – PPL PWR: Josh outlined the approach of a collective of student groups working to tackle the challenges of sustainability. The collective is already bringing together the work of groups like UCell and Comp-A-Tent. 

Haibo Xiao: poster campaign: Haibo created a series of attention-grabbing posters to get the UCL community thinking about sustainability issues.