Wednesday 19-08-2020 - 15:09

Lancaster University Students’ Union has been awarded ‘Very Good’ in the NUS Green Impact Awards, in recognition of our work to become a more sustainable organisation and campaign to protect the environment.

This achievement has come about after a lot of hard work this year, with the Union auditing and reducing its plastic use, declaring a Climate Emergency, supporting the development of the EcoHub, and working to ensure sustainability is embedded in the new organisational strategy. 

Green Impact is the National Union of Student’s flagship sustainability program. The program provides a framework for students’ unions approach to sustainability and an opportunity to share expertise. In its 13th year, the Green Impact award is a well-established and recognised award among UK students’ unions. 

The Green Impact award recognises all aspects of the unions sustainability work, from the ground-breaking Don’t Ditch It project (now in it’s 11th year) to the Forest of the Future regeneration program.  

The auditor Michelle Hemmingfield, gave special mention to our fantastic (award winning) Environmental Sustainability team and said: “The work the union have done this year is hugely impressive, and it was great to see how well staff and officers work together. One stand out aspect of the audit was the residential training programme for incoming student sustainability staff, which seemed ambitious and impactful. The investment in these staff clearly paid off as they achieved amazing things, leading many initiatives across the union. The union consistently score highly in GISU and with cross-union support could reach Excellence.” 

Darren Axe (Development Manager (Environmental Sustainability) said: “It’s fantastic for the Union’s efforts on environmental sustainability this year to be recognised through achieving ‘Very Good’ standard in the Green Impact Awards. We’ve had a particularly successful year with our Green Lancaster (Student Staff) team being recognised in the Student Employee of the Year (team) award and it was particularly rewarding to see the innovative residential training and development course on the Isle of Eigg, Scotland recognised by the auditor”. 

SOS-UK (NUS Sustainability Charity) auditor Michelle Hemmingfield said: “Congratulations and thank you for demonstrating leadership on embedding sustainability and social justice across your campus, the curriculum, and wider society.” 

The students’ union is overjoyed with the incredible work being done and to receive this great recognition of it. The students’ union is committed to sustainability, tackling the climate emergency and the fight for climate justice. Following the announcement of supporting funds from Trustee Board to ensure that university cuts will not affect our progress in this area, we can’t wait to see what can be achieved in the coming year.  

 

You can view the impact report for 2018/2019.

You can follow the Green Lancaster team on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.