Celebrating the people who make Sustainability happen – a year of FutureProof

On June 1st we held a celebration BBQ at the Kent Community Oasis Garden in celebration of our staff Sustainability Champions Network and sustainability volunteers that are making sustainability happen across the University as part of the FutureProof project.

The June 1st Celebration

The BBQ was an opportunity to say thank you to everyone for their continued engagement in sustainability projects in what has been a year of having to adapt to a new normal. FutureProof relies on the continued commitment of our staff volunteers who are delivering sustainability projects within their teams and departments.

We had some continuing projects from previous years including the annual lecture on Computing and Climate Change; KBS’ Stage 2 Market Research Project; Anthropology and Conservation’s Sustainability Working Groups including the annual BioBlitz; embedding sustainability into the Global Officers Programme; and the Medway Green Spaces Project which saw new accessible pathways, beds and green gym equipment installed.

New features at the Medway campus.

We held three formal online workshops for champions this academic year. In autumn term we marked COP26 with a special addition to our SDG and a Cup of Tea series: The Road to Net Zero: The Role of Staff. In Spring Term we welcomed our new champions into FutureProof with a two part guide to the project and a focus on the six Sustainable Development Goals that feature in our new Sustainability Strategy.

Workshops of 2021/2022.

We also had new projects and some exciting collaborations:

  • Our first external champion, Debi Adams, who runs the Kent Community Oasis Garden (a partnership project between the University and East Kent Mind) is collaborating with Silvio Caputo, our KSAP champion on a Horizon Research Proposal looking at the delivery of ecotherapy in our garden
  • New champion Lori Fisher from Biosciences will be collaborating with champions from across catering on delivering Love Food Hate Waste engagement materials
  • New champion Margarita Prieto-Acosta has been on a mission to reduce waste and ensure the proper segregation of waste at Kent Law School during office moves
  • Champions from the Division of Human and Social Sciences Operations; Knowledge Exchange and Innovation; and Internationalisation have been collaborating on a Sustainable Events guide to support staff in making easy sustainable decisions when planning and delivering events across campus. The website for this will be launching soon
  • Champions from College and Community Life have been collaborating with the Kent Community Oasis Garden and Landscape and Grounds Champions Chris Wright to deliver Plant a Seed sessions, mindfulness session and bushcraft workshops
CCL activities.

And finally, our monthly newsletter was relaunched featuring campus sustainability updates; positive national and international news; Champion book reviews and blogs; and the much loved sustainability wordsearch.

It has been a difficult year as we navigate living with covid; adapt to hybrid working; and seek to build back the sustainability momentum we had pre-pandemic. However, it has been wonderful to get FutureProof going again and see staff reengage and build upon their projects or start new ventures despite a challenging backdrop.

A massive thank you to everyone that has been involved from the Sustainability Team. We could not do it without you!

The Gulbenkian: Project Zero

Project Zero – The Gulbenkian have been on a mission to reduce all waste where possible from their café, theatre and cinema operations.  Since the start of Project Zero, headed up by Sustainability Champion Daniel Parsons, they have:

• Removed all single use plastic bottles in the café, saving an estimated 50000 plastic bottles since August 2018

• Switched to reusable plastic pint and half pint cups which has significantly reduced their single use plastic cup buying

• Partnered with ‘Too Good To Go’ and sold 626 magic bags. These are bags of food that would be thrown away and instead offer meals to customers at significantly reduced rates

• Sent all their milk bottle caps to a company that reuse the plastic, that’s about 300 caps a week

• Hosted a family day on climate change with thoughts, ideas and pledges shared on the ‘SustainabiliTree.’

The Sustainability Team at the Gulbenkian will be continuing Project Zero into the next academic year and will continue their focus on waste as well as looking at carbon.

Introducing our new Student Sustainable Goals Ambassadors (Part One)

As part of the University’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and our under our FutureProof behaviour change project the Sustainability Team have recruited a group of amazing students who are Kent’s first Sustainable Development Goals Ambassadors.

The SDGs or the Global Goals are 17 goals that outline the vision for a sustainable world by 2030. The 17 goals and underlying targets were created and signed by 193 countries at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in 2015. The goals seek to finish the job that was started by the Millennium Goals which ran from 2000 to 2015 and brought 850,000,000 people out of extreme poverty and yet saw carbon emissions increase by 9,850,000 kilotons.

The Student Sustainable Development Goals ambassadors’ role is to promote the goals to fellow students and staff; encourage, motivate and support the Staff Sustainability Champions network; increase the ease of reporting on sustainability achievements within the University; increase student staff collaboration; and lead on their own sustainability projects.

From the role we aim to support students in understanding more about sustainability; equip them with useful skills for future employability; and recognise their efforts with employability points.

In their own words, over the next few blogs posts we will introduce this year’s cohort of Sustainable Goals Ambassadors.

Huda

My name is Huda and I’m an architecture postgraduate student from Sudan, Africa. I’ve always been interested about animals and conservation, as a child I’d watch natgeo documentaries just as much as i watched cartoon network. I always wondered what i could do as an individual to preserve the planet for both animals and people, the answer was sustainability as a lifestyle, not just a trend. Living in a poor country made me interested in low cost solutions specifically that help improve people’s quality of life on a tight budget and without impacting our environment. Therefore, as an architect, my focus in the Sustainable development goals is on sustainable cities and communities.

During a trip to zanzibar, the hotel owner showed me how he built wells for the village using plastic bottles. His idea provided clean water, cleaned the beach of plastics, provided a source of income for the village ladies in filling the plastic bottles and taught villagers how to build using this sustainable method all in one solution. My ambitions for my role as a sustainability ambassador is to advocate for solutions that have a multitude of benefits both environmentally and economically.

Adrian

Hello, my name is Adrian Joyeux. I’m a 2nd year student studying Politics and International Relations with French. At this moment I cannot think of anything else to describe myself that doesn’t sound rehearsed or boring. So, instead I have chosen to just state three random sustainable or earth related facts that are dear to my heart, because anyone that knows me will now that I absolutely LOVE random facts. The first random fact, is about me, I currently take up about 3 earths (meaning that if everyone lived like me, then it would take 3 earths to sustain my lifestyle). The odd thing about it is that I am happy about it. Before then I took up 6.5 planets, so I have definitely improved somewhere. The second random fact, is that the earth is constantly recycling. Nature uses everything to sustain and grow the environment. The third fact, is that it takes about 2,700 litres of water to produce 1 cotton t- shirt.

I am taking part in the Sustainability Goals program on campus for two main reasons. One reason being, today we are seeing drastic changes in the world both good and bad and nature is reacting.   More and more people are being forced to immigrate to other countries due to environmental reasons. Sadly, one day, places like the beautiful sandy beach and clear blue sea waters of the Maldives will disappear. Reports, are stating that many countries such as South Africa, Mexico, and even the United Kingdom has or will have a day zero were they cannot provide continuous running water. The other reason I am taking part of this program is because I would like to learn more about sustainability internationally and domestically and to see how we as individuals and organizations can make an impactful change in sustainable living and production.

By taking part in this program I believe I can make a positive impact by promoting the various sustainable actions the University is participating in and hopefully creating action that will be adopted by the University.  I aim to mix various goals together such as goal 6: Clean water and sanitation, goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy and goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities. I hope the chain reaction will affect other developmental goals.

Louise

My name is Louise Al-Hakkak. I’m a French exchange student here for a year. I study social sciences, politics, law and international relations at my home university. I was part of the Environment society there and took care of an organic vegetable garden on campus. I’m passionate about nature, Latin America, languages, politics and geopolitics, history, photography and environmental issues.

I’m interested in sustainability because I think it is crucial that we limit our impact on the earth as quick as possible so that we can have a habitable environment for ourselves but most importantly so that we stop destroying biodiversity.

The goals I’m most passionate about are No Poverty (1), Clean Water and Sanitation (6), Reduced Inequalities (10), Responsible Consumption and Production (12), Life Below Water (14) and Life on Land (15). Goals 1 and 10 tackle social problems which I would like to see eradicated. I like goal 6 because the sustainability workshop made me realise how important sanitation is and why it is so important that everyone has access to it. The water aspect is also very important when we see that water is being privatised in many parts of the world. Goal 12 is probably my favourite one as it is the one which tackles consumerism and waste. Finally, goals 14 and 15 concern biodiversity which is a big concern right now seeing the state of the ocean and how many species are going extinct almost every week.

My ambition for the role is to be able to have a real impact on campus, to feel that I’m useful and that I am actually helping to move towards the Sustainable Development Goals. I would like to work around recycling, food waste, reducing packaging …