Plastic-Free UCL

What is UCL doing?

• Reducing our use of non-essential single-use plastics (even those labled as recyclable). 
• Avoiding compostable plastic because our facilities cannot treat them.
• Swapping out disposable hygiene plastics with reusable options.
• Giving you easy tips on how to cut down on your plastic use.
• Using essential plastics only when there are no safer or more sustainable alternatives, like lab gloves.
• Providing single-use plastics when needed to ensure UCL is accessible to everyone, like straws, find out more.
• Learn about our impact on education from our annual report.

Six Action Areas

Catering

Catering currently accounts for 154,000 single-use plastic items per year.

Targets:

• 2022: Single-use plastic free hospitality
• 2022: Disposable coffee cup usage below 65%
• 2023: Single-use plastic free kitchens
• 2023: Single-use plastic free retail service (coffee cups, straws, food tubs, etc.)
• 2024: Single-use plastic free supplier packaging, deliveries, and retail items (chocolate bars, crisps, etc.)

Actions:

• Mapping and identifying more areas for Tupperware storage, enabling us to eliminate cling film
• Recruiting more staff and improving facilities for washing up;
• Geting our coffee supplied in reusable buckets and milk in reusable pergals; and more!

Progress:

• We now provide a 100% disposable free hospitality service, with reusable cutlery and crockery provided.
• All our sandwich deliveries are now plastic free.
• Successful roll-out of 50p cup charge for disposable coffee cups. 

Construction

Construction currently accounts for 150 tonnes of single-use plastic waste per year, which is nearly a quarter of UCL’s total plastic footprint.

Actions:

• With construction partners Mace, we have created a single-use plastics scorecard for construction sites.
• Along with the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub, Mace have created a framework for materials lifecycle assessments (LCA) for large construction projects.
• We will ensure all the relevant staff receive up to date training to use our online waste data reporting and tracking tools to ensure our data is more accurate and insightful.
• We will also seek to embed the single-use plastics scorecard in all our future projects and strive to set plastic reduction targets within new contracts. Longer-term, it is essential that we look to ‘design out’ single-use plastics from the beginning. For currently essential single-use plastics used as the most sustainable means to protect construction materials, we will seek to set up takeback schemes with suppliers.

Laboratories

Labs currently account for over 38 million single-use plastic items per year.

Targets:

• 2024: Eliminate all non-essential consumables.
• 2023: Ensure every lab space has at least one take back scheme for non-contaminated single-use items.

Actions:

• We have reviewed all of our main suppliers and created a list of new recommended suppliers based on their single-use plastic and sustainability credentials.
• For the first time, we have attempted to understand the scale of plastic use in labs through our single-use plastic baseline. This is a huge step enabling us to focus and drive future action.
• We will work with procurement managers and lab coordinators to reduce the number of suppliers we use, enabling items to be ordered in bulk, saving packaging and ensuring only items with the lowest plastic footprint are consumed. We will also be setting up a lab plastic working group to foster more collaboration and cooperation between labs. In addition, we will seek to expand the chemical inventories we currently have to all labs, so unnecessary products are no longer purchased, reducing packaging wherever possible.
• We will work with procurement managers and lab coordinators to reduce the number of suppliers we use, enabling items to be ordered in bulk, saving packaging and ensuring only items with the lowest plastic footprint are consumed. We will also be setting up a lab plastic working group to foster more collaboration and cooperation between labs. In addition, we will seek to expand the chemical inventories we currently have to all labs, so unnecessary products are no longer purchased, reducing packaging wherever possible.

Offices

Using UCL's Green Impact programme, all stationery, IT, print, cleaning, and catering products used in UCL’s office spaces, excluding personal consumption will be included.

Targets:

• 2024: To provide a full range of single-use plastic free stationery items and office supplies. 2024: Use 100% remanufactured print cartridges.

Actions:

• When our contract with our stationery and print providers renew, we will embed single-use plastic requirements within these contracts. This ensures that suppliers and providers take action, reducing plastic before it even arrives at UCL’s campuses.

Progress:

All orders from Banner, our stationery provider, are now packaged with recycled paper void fill. This saves 316 square meters of plastic void fill per year – that’s enough to cover 1.2 tennis courts. We are currently working to remove plastic packaged products form our eMarketplace, replacing these with cardboard packaged alternatives.

Events

Targets:

• 2023: All events single-use plastic free.
• 2022: Single-use plastic free graduations.

Actions:

We will have student Sustainability Ambassadors, at major events throughout the year to ensure best practice is followed. We will also pioneer UCL’s first official single-use plastic free events and communicate these with our wider community to show what is possible.

Our progress:

• We have created several resources to enable you to plan a plastic free event, including a single-use plastic scorecard for events planners. 

Logistics

All postal and delivery packaging associated with logistics on UCL campuses.

Targets:

• 2024: Eliminate all non-essential single-use plastic packaging in deliveries. 2024: Recycle all essential single-use plastic packaging.

Actions:

• We will work to cancel all junk mail deliveries to UCL, and embed plastic packaging metrics in our parcel tracking system.

Plastic reduction database

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