Author: kcl sustainability (Page 6 of 12)

Sustainability Forum: An Unpowered Future? Ensuring Energy Security in Europe

November 17, 2015 / kcl sustainability

King’s Sustainability collaborated with King’s Think Tank to lead a panel discussion into a future of changing energy supplies within Europe, and how European energy demands can be met without the use of environmentally harmful fossil fuels.

To help us answer this, four guest speakers were invited to present their views on the topic. This included:

• Malcolm Keay from the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies.
(Malcolm has worked in both the public, private and non-profit sector. He has also been special advisor to the House of Lords Committee Inquiry into Energy Security in Europe and Director of the Energy and Climate Change Study for the World Energy Council).
• Jonathan Church is an Environmental Lawyer at ClientEarth.
(Jonathan specialises in climate and energy legislation, with a particular focus on the UK Climate Change Act. Prior to this Jonathan worked in research and campaigning roles for an EU-related NGO).
• Catherine Early is Deputy Editor of the Environmentalist.
(Catherine has specialised in energy and environmental journalism since 2003, where she has written for Environment Business, Real Power and the Guardian).
• Danielle Paffard is a Divestment Campaigner at 350.org.
(Danielle has helped start up highly influential campaigns such as UK Uncut, Move Your Money and No Dash for Gas, in a bid against fossil fuel sponsorship).

Each of the four speakers brought their own contrasting view to the topics, giving their own views on the topic before opening the floor to audience questions. Jonathan focused on the use of legislation as a tool for energy security, and Malcolm into possible energy policies looking to the future. Catherine presented an array of media perceptions on energy supplies, blaming the media for often contorting perceptions of an energy ‘crisis’ when this is not always the case. Danielle, unsurprisingly, used the debate to highlight the necessity to divest from non-renewable sources of energy generation and encouraged students to join the King’s Fossil Free movement. The myriad of opinions from the four speakers offers an important reminder of the complexity and diversity of energy security issues within Europe.

We are currently looking to hold similar events in Green Week next February (8th – 12th). If you, or your societies have any thoughts on events like these (or completely different), please do get in touch at sustainability@kcl.ac.uk and we would be more than happy to try and help facilitate your ideas.

Rhianne Menzies, Sustainability Projects Assistant

Tunza Gorilla

October 5, 2015 / kcl sustainability

This weeks guest blog comes courtesy of Richard Milburn (a PhD student in the War Studies department) who tell us about his new sustainable start-up, Tunza Gorilla.

We’ve launched Tunza Gorilla, our ethical fashion brand with a mission to protect gorillas. Tunza means ‘care for’ in Swahili. We want to work with communities to protect gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

All our clothing is made using 100% Organic Cotton in a factory powered by renewable energy which pays their staff fair wages, and we’re donating 50% of our profits to gorilla conservation charities. We’re reinvesting the rest to help our company grow and achieve our vision of empowering consumers to use the clothes they wear to make a better world.

Gorillas are wonderful, peaceful animals, but are also one of the most endangered species on earth. We’re starting out focusing on the eastern gorilla sub species; there are only 900 mountain gorillas and 2-3,000 eastern lowland gorillas alive today, living in forests in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Surrounding them are thousands of people living in poverty who depend on the forest for their survival; these communities cut down trees for charcoal to cook food and boil water and lay traps to catch bushmeat. Unfortunately, the gorillas sometimes get caught in these traps and their habitat is under threat from deforestation. These communities do not mean any harm, they simply have no other choice because they are so poor.

So both the gorillas and these communities need our help.

Tunza Gorilla Provides the Solution

The idea for Tunza Gorilla came from seeing the plight of the gorillas and the surrounding communities and wanting to help. From studying the issues involved in more detail we realised we needed to find a way to create a large number of jobs for these communities that were connected with conservation. This would lift them out of poverty and help them see the value of gorillas and work to protect them.

At the same time we found there were virtually no products we could buy that protected gorillas. Yet there are thousands, if not millions, of people in the UK and worldwide who love gorillas and want to protect them.

That seemed like the perfect opportunity: to give people living around the gorillas jobs making products for consumers around the world who wanted to protect gorillas. We thought fashion was a great way to do this: we need to improve the ethics of the fashion industry anyway, we wear clothes everyday so they are a necessity and make a statement about who we are, and clothing manufacture is a labour-intensive industry.

As two students with little start-up capital but a massive passion to use business to drive positive social and environmental change, we have a simple mantra: Think Big. Start Small. Act Now.

Think Big: Our aim is to create a fashion brand that employs communities living around the gorillas to make our clothes. This lifts them out of poverty so they no longer need to set traps for bushmeat, which in turn protects gorillas – we call it being ‘eco-man friendly’. And it supports the drive to make ethical and sustainable fashion accessible and affordable to as many people as possible; our basic t-shirts cost just £12.

Start Small: Before we can start to employ these communities, however, we need to establish our brand and prove there is demand for our products.

Act Now: So we’re launching this crowdfunding campaign with our initial range of ethical and sustainable clothing and donating 50% of our profits to gorilla conservation charities. We’re then reinvesting the other 50% back into the company to help us grow.

Our crowdfunding campaign goes live on the Helping B platform – a crowdfunding site dedicated to supporting ethical business – on the 6th October at https://www.helpingb.co/tunza-gorilla-ethical-fashion-brand/. Supporters can pledge support from as little as £1 and help us to launch a company dedicated to making a better world.

See www.tunzagorilla.com for more, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Veolia’s Southwark Integrated Waste Facility Tour

September 22, 2015 / kcl sustainability

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend a tour of Veolia’s waste treatment facility. Veolia operates under a ‘circular economy’ business principle, whereby waste to landfill is removed from the waste process, and replaced by recycling or energy from waste. This aims to further incorporate sustainable thought into the waste process, with Veolia stating that adopting this circular economy principle could inject £29 billion (1.8% of GDP) into the UK economy, alongside the creation of an extra 175,000 jobs.

On the day, we were given opening talks by various managers across Veolia’s operations who discussed their practices within the waste and energy sectors. This involved presentations into the innovative solutions that Veolia has adopted, such as recycling street sweepings (e.g. cans/ plastics for general recycling and twigs/leaves for biodegradation). This is done through a process of wet and dry separation, which diverts 85-90 % of street sweepings from landfill.

The materials being processed through disc screens, which separates resources.

The Southwark treatment facility operates across a number of waste types, with 50% of recycled waste sold to brokers in the UK and the other 50% abroad. Waste is split between cardboard, glass, juice cartons and more, showing how value can be derived from waste.

Veolia’s Southwark waste treatment facility is located near Old Kent Road (SE15 1AL) and serves as the main recycling point for the borough at a number of locations across King’s

Veolia’s Southwark waste treatment facility is located near Old Kent Road (SE15 1AL) and serves as the main recycling point for the borough and a number of locations across King’s.

With a large amount of King’s waste taken for treatment by Veolia, how can King’s help to mitigate waste from landfill?

Students in residences should be reminded that they can recycle plastics, cardboard, glass, paper, tins, tetrapak (juice cartons) in recycling bins located in shared kitchens. Batteries, clothing and electrical items (phone chargers, printers etc.) can also be recycled at residences, but not in kitchen bins.

The new bins!

New recycling bins have just been rolled out across Champion Hill residences. Stamford Street Apartments and Great Dover Street Apartments will also be receiving new recycling bins on the 28th September.

If you are unsure about how to recycle any waste, please contact your residence manager or email the Sustainability team at sustainability@kcl.ac.uk.

Rhianne Menzies, Sustainability Projects Assistant

Sustainability Champions- Culture at King’s

August 17, 2015 / kcl sustainability

This weeks guest blog comes courtesy of Culture at Kings, who tell us about some of the great initiatives they have been carrying out over the last few months as well as their upcoming sustainability plans.

“If you know where to look, you can find many great green initiatives at King’s. There’s an Urban Garden Project, a Cycling Club and there’s even talk of having a bee hive on the roof of the Strand building. It’s fantastic to see how many people across the University are concerned with the environment and we at Culture at King’s wanted to be a part of that of course, so we signed up to the Sustainability Champions scheme with a team of six.

We worked through our workbook and ticked the boxes for a greener office: printing double-sided, wearing jumpers instead of turning up the heating, drinking Fairtrade tea, and shutting down equipment that’s not in use. But soon we started to change things in our personal routines as well. We realised we were eating less meat, we wouldn’t buy products with excessive wrapping, at least two of us have a 4-minute-shower-challenge timer, and we started bringing spare fruit and veg into the office to share with colleagues to reduce our food waste.

Stella Toonen signed up to receiving a bagful of organic vegetables every week, an initiative run by PhD student Roger Hallam in the CMCI department to offer an alternative to buying groceries from supermarkets. Yvonne Castle attended a Bee Hotel Workshop led by Urban Bees, a free event which was part of the Northbank Festival. She made a little bamboo hotel for solitary bees and learnt lots about the different types of bees pollinating London flora. And Kate Dunton helped out at her local organic community allotment and planted bee-friendly flowering herbs in her own garden.

So with all the support we received from colleagues we decided we could take it a bit further and started organising bigger awareness initiatives. We set up an ‘Air Con Free Fridays’ pilot in the office for July and August, which is going very well. And we’re planning to organise a ‘Buy British Week’, in which we encourage staff to buy products grown close to home and celebrate their achievements with a picnic on the last day of the week.

Staff enjoying the breeze at our first Air Con Free Friday

It looks like we’ve got exciting ‘green’ things coming up, and (perhaps subconsciously) our work across King’s also seems to include some great initiatives too. Our Science Gallery London team at Guy’s campus has been promoting the benefits of eating insects through our Fed Up season about food, and as part of our Cultural Institute’s Utopia 2016 season we’re already having great conversations with artists about visualising a perfectly sustainable world. As Sustainability Champions we’d like to think we had something to do with it.”

Green Impact Audit Training

August 12, 2015 / kcl sustainability

Last week we held training for students and staff to become Green Impact Auditors as part of the NUS Green Impact scheme, gaining practical experience of auditing through the IEMA approved scheme.

With 27 teams currently working towards their Green Impact award as part of the Sustainability Champions scheme at King’s, there has been some great changes across the university already!

The morning involved a training session, with a quick introduction into environmental auditing, as well as a discussion into what sustainability meant to each of us. The variety of responses to this, Fairtrade produce, longevity, recycling, compassion, showed the true variety of things that sustainability encompasses across King’s.

The team of auditors last Thursday!

After discussions, ice breakers and lunch, we began to prepare for an afternoon of audits. This involved taking a positive approach to all communications, while looking for evidence to support team’s environmental actions. Each of the auditors were given the chance to get involved with hands-on training and learn about the small changes that can be made to create a more sustainable environment across King’s.

With the Sustainability Champions Awards Evening taking place on the 22nd September it will be a great chance to see the results from last week’s audits and reward the teams for the efforts they have made in the last few months!

The Sustainability Champions scheme provides the opportunity for everyone to get more involved with sustainability across King’s. We are hoping to continue to expand this sustainable network across King’s in the next academic year, so if this seems like something you and your department may be interested in, get involved by filling out an application form.

For any further details of how you can get involved with sustainability at King’s in general, contact the Sustainability team at sustainability@kcl.ac.uk or sign up to our newsletter.

Rhianne Menzies, Sustainability Projects Assistant

Swap Shop with F&SD champions!

July 27, 2015 / kcl sustainability

On 13 May 2015, we held the first ever Fundraising & Supporter Development swap shop to encourage sustainable behaviour change across our team of 113 staff members. It was held in Virginia Woolf Building on Kingsway, lasted for two hours and more than 50 people attended.

The swap shop raised £107 toward the King’s Helipad Appeal, donated 120 items to Oxfam and 30 items to the homeless shelter in St Martin’s In the Fields.

We also had some regular and some Fairtrade home-baked goods to accompany the swapping, and people could donate what they thought their items were worth. Things baked included Fairtrade sponge cake, flapjacks, banana bread and Guinness cake, all of which went down a treat.

There was also music and this turned the event into a bit of a social for our team. We also gave away free Fairtrade tea samples, and also sustainably-produced Green Reggie branded canvas bags, in which people could carry away their booty.

Some people were incredibly generous and donated literally dozens of items, and we also had many clothes given to us by popular fashion label Warehouse, as they are one of our charity supporters. Overall, we had a mixture of men and women’s clothes, accessories, shoes, books and homeware items.

The swap shop helped to raise the profile of the F&SD sustainability team, build awareness of our activities and encouraged other team members to get involved. Colleagues straightaway insisted we hold another one, and we currently have plans to host one again after August, once the other half of our team joins us from across the bridge in JCMB.

Please contact Catherine.heath@kcl.ac.uk if you would like any more information about the swap shop.

King’s Sustainable Lab Awards

July 17, 2015 / kcl sustainability

Last week the Sustainability team hosted the first ever KCL Lab Sustainability Awards. These awards are a part of the NUS Green Impact awards with a focus on research laboratories, and utilise the S-Lab environmental assessment framework to evaluate labs for their efficiency and sustainability. 10 teams participated in the awards; the most teams in England. 8 won bronze and the other 2 teams commendably won silver, as the long-term goals are for incremental effective improvements which are user driven.

A host of positive actions were taken as a part of these awards. Martin Farley, (Research Efficiency Officer and lab-awards manager) spoke of some tissue culture labs at FWB managed by Beatriz Padilla (PhD candidate). Their ULT freezer was almost full and they were either about buy a new freezer or out source for space. Instead they decided to defrost there ULT freezer as a part of the awards. They managed to create ~40-50% more space, audited the samples they had, and put less strain on the freezers compressor by cleaning the dirty filter. Not only did they avoid purchase and running costs of a new ULT freezer, they saved on the one they owned.

Worth mentioning are the two silver teams: Dr. Bernard Freeman (Lab Manager) and Sandhya Anantharaman (Research Technician) helped SGDP achieve a silver award with their in-house designed online lab management tools. Women’s Health also commendably achieved silver through their note-worthy engagement and shared plans to re-engage with the awards next year. Dr. Pamela Taylor-Harris of the Women’s Health Team (also including Cally Gill and Rima Patel) stated “Women’s Health were definitely inspired by lab sustainability and I’m sure would like to take part again and continue to improve practice in the future.”.

Next year the aim is to grow the number of teams participating, and aid the repeating teams to achieve new and improved goals in an aim to bring all labs to a Gold standard. Look to our website for more details and updates about what is going on, or contact Martin Farley or the sustainability team at sustainability@kcl.ac.uk.

Make money from your waste – A guide to leaving halls

June 4, 2015 / kcl sustainability

As the academic year is coming to an end and we prepare for the summer, there’s lot to do in regards to changing accommodation. Of course spending those last weeks with are friends is the very important, meaning that packing is normally left to the last minute. Our energy assistant, Bolaji Olaniru has written some tips for you to help with your move!

Packing!!!

So you might not want to take all your items with you when you leave. You might want to get rid of books, old bags, clothes, shoes, hair dryers, whatever! But wait a minute; don’t just throw these items away! You could make some money on these or help those in need – but most importantly recycling your stuff will save a lot of energy and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

And it’s so easy. You’ll have three types of stuff to consider when you leave: Things you want to keep, useful items that you don’t want an obvious waste (which could still be recycled – check out our website for what can and can’t be recycled at King’s).

Items that can be reuse (e.g. clothes and books) charity shops are a great place to start. Why not try a couple of these:

Local Charity shops

These are good for most items such as shoes, clothes and books. We recommend you check before about electrical goods (see below for more options).

Guy’s Campus http://www.hotriccharityshop.com/ – 52 Tower Bridge Rd, London SE1 4TR

Denmark Hill Campus: http://www.scope.org.uk/ – 42 Denmark Hill, Camberwell, London SE5 1JL

Strand Campus: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/ – 23 Drury lane, WC2B 5RH

Waterloo Campus and St Thomas’: http://www.tht.org.uk/ -14-15 Lower Marsh, SE1 7RJ

Collection from residences

If you would like someone to collect from your residence instead, you can book collections.

For Clothes look at: http://www.traid.org.uk/clothes-recycling/book-a-collection/

For other Items get out the Gov website: https://www.gov.uk/recycling-collections

Or why not post you items onto Free Cycle? People come and collect you stuff for free J

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)

You can drop off small handheld electrical items (smaller than 25 X 31 cm) such as hair dryers, computer keyboards, toasters and kettles in various WEEE bank locations: http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/10070/recycling/2550/weee_banks. For really bulky items given them a ring on 020 7525 2000 and they can come and collect for you.

You can also use the King’s service for collecting WEEE waste by completing this form.

Selling your books, CDs, mobile phones and DVDs

Did you know you can sell all of these online and make a bit of money too? All you need to do is log them online and then take them to a local collection point (often a post office or corner shop)

Check out a few of these:

For books, CDs, DVDs, games, electronics and mobiles: Zapper For old mobiles: Mazuma For electronics (mobiles, CDs etc): Music Magpie

Check out Facebook groups for you subjects as well as to sell your old text books – Fresher’s are always looking to buy them e.g. Geography or even Physics.

Still not sure what to do with your waste? Contact us at Sustainability@kcl.ac.uk or call 0207 848 7302 for more help and advice.

Meet Estates and Facilities – Fit for King’s

May 26, 2015 / kcl sustainability

It’s Week 3 of ‘Meet Estates and Facilities’ and today brings us to Vicki, the Fit for King’s manager at King’s, who also works within the training team.

Fit for King’s is a programme that aims to help King’s ‘provide a world class service for a world class university’. It is a customer service cultural change programme, which includes 10, hour long training sessions based around the Fit For King’s commitments that all Estates staff take over their first year at King’s. Vicki’s main role is to ensure that all staff across all the campuses are kept up to date with Fit for King’s. Vicki is also a Fit for King’s trainer and organises and develops the sessions throughout the year.

Within Fit for King’s there is an award scheme which recognises those that have shown commitment to the Fit for King’s commitments. For this, members of staff are awarded vouchers and all invited to attend the annual awards at which someone is selected for an overall Fit for King’s award.

Fit For King’s also provides a mentoring scheme for its staff in Estates. Staff can either apply to be mentors and mentees, with the opportunity to work towards helping staff members plan for the future and develop their current role. This is a great way to link people within Estates together and this year there are 27 mentees and 14 mentors.

W bins ithin Fit for King’s there are multiple ways in which it links to sustainability. Firstly each team (Estates teams for example Capital House or Guy’s estates team), produce a termly plan which address PPP: people, processes and premises. Each team come up with one thing that they are going to do in order to improve each of these Ps. Last term, Guy’s Estates work on premises saw the addition of the new recycle bins within Guy’s Quad. This term, Capital House team are looking at removing all under desk bins and improving signage for recycling.

Fit for King’s also runs an Induction session for all new staff to King’s. Within this the Sustainability team have a slot in which they can introduce the team to everyone and share our sustainable values.

Finally, we also have one of our members from the Sustainability team (Ann) who is a Fit for King’s trainer, ensure that a face of sustainability is seen by most estates staff and also she is given the opportunity to help develop training sessions and embed sustainability further into the programme.

Sustainable labs at King’s

May 11, 2015 / kcl sustainability

This week we are catching up with Martin, our Sustainable Labs Project Coordinator, to find out how he is getting on with making King’s labs more sustainable.

As part of Martins job he is currently collecting information about various different pieces of equipment throughout the labs at King’s. Within these surveys he is looking at a variety of lab specific equipment including drying cabinets and fume cupboards, with an aim to reduce energy consumption and improve usage.

One current project involves replacing drying cabinets with much more efficient models. Furthermore Martin has been giving out timers to labs so that non-critical equipment such as drying cabinets can be turned off at night and then come on again in the morning, saving plenty of energy during nights. The estimated savings from the timers alone is expected to save around £30,000 over the next 10 years at King’s.

Martin is also looking at fume hoods and their usage to ensure they are being used correctly and are working as efficiently as possible. Many of the fume hoods are VAV (variable air volume) which have the potential to save a lot of energy. However it is vital that these are being used correctly and Martin is surveying to determine the status of our current usage.

Another large part of Martins role focuses on Sustainability Champions in labs. Within this programme, labs teams are asked to complete a workbook, which looks at improve the sustainability of the lab from waste and recycling to chemicals and materials. There are now 9 lab teams across King’s, representing the labs from all campuses. All of the Champions are at least at bronze level and are working hard to improve the sustainability of their labs. Martin is currently in the process of auditing these area and the awards for labs will be in July, hosted by Nick O’Donnell.

If you’d like to get your lab involved or would like more information on sustainable labs please contact Martin.

Author: kcl sustainability (Page 6 of 12)

Sustainability Forum: An Unpowered Future? Ensuring Energy Security in Europe

Tunza Gorilla

Veolia’s Southwark Integrated Waste Facility Tour

Sustainability Champions- Culture at King’s

Green Impact Audit Training

Swap Shop with F&SD champions!

King’s Sustainable Lab Awards

Make money from your waste – A guide to leaving halls

Meet Estates and Facilities – Fit for King’s

Sustainable labs at King’s

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