10. Brilliant Biodiversity
Green Impact criteria S014 talks about proactive initiatives to sustain or encourage biodiversity. This is the perfect excuse for a sunflower growing competition, and that’s exactly what the green fingered teams of level 6 in the students union have done. Seeds: £1.99, Compost: £7, Pots: £4.50*, Increased biodiversity: priceless.
*I made most of these up. They bought their own sunflower seeds and got people to donate compost and pots. The University landscape team might have helped a bit too.
11. Capitalise on current trends
We are now in the middle of Fairtrade Fortnight, a great opportunity to raise awareness of Green Impact and ethical, sustainable procurement. The Fairtrade Foundation helps to get a fair price for farmers and this year their campaign is focussing on bananas, hoping to end the banana price wars of UK supermarkets. Today the Infection and Immunity department of the University held a Fairtrade coffee morning “Going bananas for Fairtrade”. What could your department do this week and next?
12. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate.
10 people doing 2 simple actions each is a lot easier than one person doing 20! This has worked well at two levels: team, and wider department or faculty. It’s the latter that I want to highlight.
Student services have 100% participation in Green Impact this year (15 teams), and ACS and the medical faculty are not far behind with 80% participation each. What all these departments have in common, is that their teams meet regularly to support each other. Susan Gill (Student Services), Andy Woffindin (ACS) and Linda Hudson (Medical Faculty) all volunteer to oversee and motivate these teams, decreasing any feeling of isolation and increasing support, efficiency and productivity. Could you offer to get your faculty together for a chat?