King’s’ new Sustainability Manager, Dr. Nicola Hogan joined the sustainability team last month having previously worked at Goldsmiths, University of London, The EAUC and The University of Limerick in Ireland. Since starting her career in sustainability in Higher Education (HE), Nicola has worked as both a researcher and a practitioner and in some positions, as both. She has conducted research into the calculation of the Ecological Footprint of A4 paper use and from that created a road-map for HE institutions on how to reduced paper use at source, save money and reduce CO2 emissions. She has also conducted research into the use of sustainable ICT in UK universities identifying where and how ICT energy was being wasted.
In her role as Space, Environmental and Sustainability Officer at Goldsmiths Nicola was responsible for embedding sustainability into campus operation as well as ensuring the College was accredited with Fairtrade – something Nicola is particularly passionate about.
Embedding Sustainability into campus operations across a multi-site university has many barriers – something she is all too familiar with. From 2010-2016 Nicola conducted research that examined what the barriers to sustainable performance in universities might be and how to overcome them. Nicola identified 7 barriers in total, with poor stakeholder engagement identified as being the greatest barrier. However, Nicola was quick to note that stakeholder engagement is pretty good at Kings with more than 500 staff and student sustainability champions actively doing that extra bit for the planet and for King’s, in the 2019-2020 academic year.
When asked what singular and simple action (if any) could be taken to reduce our environmental/carbon footprint and improve our overall campus operations, she indicated that a reduction of waste’ – in all its forms (solid waste, waste water and energy waste) could potentially see an improvement of sustainable performance by 20% to 30% – with almost no capital costs incurred. In fact it’s widely regarded that waste energy for example could be reduced by 20% in universities simply by switching off and powering down when not in use.
As Nicola starts in her new role at King’s College and with a new year’s resolution to reduce waste at source in 2020, she is reminding everyone to ‘take a quick look in your bin’ at what you discarded and ask yourself – ‘could I have done without it’ ?
