Award-winning sustainability champions encourage challenging old ways of working

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Award-winning sustainability champions highlighted their innovative projects at a universities and colleges event this week.

The staff and student sustainability winners from the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges’ (EAUC) Green Gown awards provided an inspiring call to action in their webinar with Salix Finance on Wednesday 30 November.

Lee Hibbett, technician manager at Nottingham University won the staff sustainability champion, and Anastasia Sofia Semaan from Canterbury Christ Church University won the highly commended student sustainability champion. 

At the event, which you can watch here, they talked about the work they achieved to win their respective awards, why sustainability is so important and encouraged the audience to challenge common orthodoxy.

Mr Hibbett 

  • Set up a Technical Sustainability Working Group for lab technicians across the University of Nottingham to implement best practice initiatives.
  • Got water condensers from chemistry labs removed and replaced with air condensers, saving more than three million litres of water. 
  • Piloted a new solvent recycler to recycle waste acetone, saving 2,000 litres of acetone a year – the first university to trial this. 
  • Set up polystyrene recycling across the university. 
  • Signed the university up to the Lab Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) – an initiative to improve the sustainability and efficiency of labs.

Anastasia Sofia Semaan found a gap in how global sustainability priorities are lacking inclusivity and translated the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) into a simplified format using Widgit Symbols, which are colourful symbols that illustrate a single concept and can be adapted internationally, supporting students with additional needs. 

She hopes her work to be the beginning of a process of translating the SDGs into local sign and symbol languages ensuring they’re fully accessible to children and adults with additional needs.

Mr Hibbett wanted the audience to question old ways of working – as they are not always the best ways of doing things - and said new ways of thinking can make a big difference.

Hayley Bristow, Green Gown award judge and programme manager for the Universities and Colleges team at Salix Finance talked about her tough job judging all the fantastic entries, and deciding, with the panel, which ones were the best. She provided future entrants to the Green Gown awards a great tip by noting that entries that had a wider impact or that could be replicated were more likely to win. 

Ms Bristow explained that Salix Finance works with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to fund carbon reduction projects in universities and colleges and the wider public sector. She said: “We work to make a tangible difference at universities and colleges in terms of sustainability.”

The event was chaired by Salix Finance client support officer in the Universities and Colleges team, Fouad Amuni. 

  • EAUC is the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges – it is the environmental and sustainability champion within further and higher education in the UK and Ireland
  • The Green Gown awards recognises exceptional sustainability initiatives being undertaken by universities and colleges and are administered by EAUC
  • The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is a government department responsible for business, industrial strategy, science, research and innovation, energy and clean growth and climate change.
  • Salix Finance provides government funding to the public sector to improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions and lower energy bills. Salix Finance is a non-departmental public body funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Education, the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government.