Category: Communication (Page 1 of 6)

King’s receives a first class award in the 2022 People & Planet University League

King’s has once again received a first class award in the People & Planet University League, ranking 12th out of 153 UK universities. This league ranks UK universities for their environmental and ethical performance. The ranking reflects King’s continued commitment to embedding social and environmental sustainability across the university.  

Across the 13 scoring areas, which include topics such as sustainable food, workers’ rights and ethical investment, King’s achieved an overall score of 69.5%. We achieved 100% for engaging students and staff on sustainability, sustainable food, and for our environmental management system.  

Students and staff are actively engaged in sustainability initiatives at King’s, embedding sustainability into their departments through the Sustainability Champions programme, contributing to climate initiatives through the King’s Climate Action Network, and getting creative through the Culture Climate Collective. Sustainability Month is the highlight of student and staff engagement at King’s and takes place each year in February. King’s Food have continuously improved the sustainability of menus and achieved three stars in the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s ‘Food Made Good’ ranking in 2022.  

In addition, King’s scored highly for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The Sustainability and Climate KEATS module has been co-created with students and gives all students and staff the opportunity to gain a meaningful understanding of sustainability, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how they can take action on sustainability. We also received high scores for being an accredited Living Wage employer, and for monitoring our ICT supply chain through our Electronics Watch affiliation as part of our London Universities Purchasing Consortium (LUPC) membership.

The main areas to improve are Ethical Careers & Recruitment, Water Reduction, Carbon Reduction, Energy Sources, and Managing Carbon. Despite our progress, we acknowledge that there is much more to do.

Find the full details about King’s performance here.

Showcase your work at the London Student Sustainability Conference 2023

Calling all students at King’s College London! 

Join this unique opportunity to showcase your sustainability work in front of an inter-university audience and to network with other like-minded students.  

Group picture from LSSC 2022 showing people holding up SDG signs.

Group picture taken at LSSC 2022.

The London Student Sustainability Conference (LSSC) is back again in February 2023 for its fifth edition. This conference is a platform for any students at a London University to showcase their work related to the Sustainable Development Goals. 

The event welcomes students, staff, professionals, and members of the public to listen and engage with student research and projects in the field of sustainability. During the event, students exhibit their research and projects through presentations, posters and workshops, followed by an early evening networking reception. 

This year’s Conference is a collaboration between King’s and 9 other London universities: City, GCU, Imperial, Kingston, LSE, South Bank, UCL, Greenwich, and Westminster. 

This is a great opportunity to share your work with a diverse audience, practice presentation skills and network with students, staff and professionals interested in sustainability from universities across London and beyond! 

Find out how to apply here. Deadline: 4th of December. 

Registrations for tickets to attend will open in January 2023. Stay tuned by subscribing to the King’s Sustainability newsletter and following King’s Sustainability on Instagram. 

Read about LSSC 2022.  

A welcome from Rosa Roe Garcia, King’s Digital Sustainability Communications Assistant

Image of Rosa standing on a bridgeHello everyone! My name is Rosa, and I work as a digital communications assistant for the Sustainability Team. My main focus is on the social media platforms, where I assist with the production of our Podcasts series, TikTok-style videos, and the development of digital educational content. I want to assist and encourage students and staff to engage with sustainability, whether through their degrees, daily lives, or future jobs.

In 2021, I graduated from a Philosophy BA at King’s. Philosophy led me to reconsider and evaluate our relationships with nature, animals, and other people. I was able to see climate change through an ethical lens, and I became aware of many of the challenges that people face when taking climate action.

Joining the Sustainability Team and environmental activist groups made me value community and university climate action. I learned about the importance of people coming together to create positive changes within our society. I am thrilled to be a part of King’s journey towards a more sustainable future.

Listen to the second series of the King’s Spotlight on Sustainability podcast

The full second series of the King’s Spotlight on Sustainability podcast is now live! This podcast aims to draw attention to sustainability at King’s and beyond. The goal is to get you thinking about some of the issues and challenges we face regarding climate change and the natural world by highlighting some of the excellent work surrounding sustainability happening at King’s and on a local, national and global level.  

Series 2 focuses on building sustainable communities, with the following episodes:

  • Episode 1: How can universities be more inclusive to migrants? With Ria Patel
  • Episode 2: Why does Equality, Diversity and Inclusion matter? With Sarah Guerra
  • Episode 3: What is the Climate Action Network? With Maria Rabanser
  • Episode 4. What is decolonisation and why is it important? With Dr Ricardo Twumasi
  • Episode 5. How can you take action to build and empower sustainable communities? With Abigail Oyedele 

Listen now.  

King’s is re-certified with the international standard ISO14001 for our environmental management system

This update is brought to you by Nicola Hogan, King’s Sustainability Manager for Operations.


King’s was recently re-certified with the international standard ISO14001 for our environmental management system.

For those of you not familiar with the international standard, it provides a framework that the King’s Estates and Facilities team can follow for guidance on best environmental practice, and subsequently submit evidence of their environmental performance. The system and its evidence are then audited by an external auditor for certification to the standard.

The recertification was awarded by NQA after one of their auditors carried out a 6-day external audit of 4 of our sites (Bush House, Guy’s Campus, Honor Oak Park and Great Dover Street Apartments). He also audited our various EMS documents, for further evidence of adherence to the ISO:140001 standard.

The auditor, who has audited King’s before and knows the campus quite well, was particularly impressed with the extent to which we communicate with staff and students via social media and newsletter. Being re-certified with this standard is important to King’s as it confirms our operations have considered their impact on the environment, minimised it where practicable and that we remain compliant with relevant legislation year on year.

An example of reduced impact on the environment includes evidencing that our recycling rates have improved and our bins are not contaminated, that our buildings source their energy from solar panels, that several of our lightings are LED and that lights and electrical equipment are not left on unnecessarily. The auditor also interviewed various staff at each site and commented on how knowledgeable everyone was about how their sites operated.

Aside from physical evidence, the auditor also needed to see that we were keeping important and relevant documentation up to date, that we were making changes in line with changes in legislation and that external global activities such as climate change, COP26, COVID and fuel supply shortages had been considered. Examples of such documents are our list of objectives and targets, our compliance register, our aspects and interested parties, and an up-to-date Environmental and Sustainable Policy that refers to the EMS.

The Sustainability Team are delighted at being re-certified but agree that we should not rest on our laurels. While our overall score was very good, the auditor identified several areas that he considered ‘opportunities for improvement’. The wider estates and facilities teams will be working hard to make those improvements and to identify where we can make further changes that will reduce our carbon footprint further. We will be audited again in March 2023, and have already started preparing for another successful audit. 

So if you are wondering what you can do to contribute to a smaller carbon footprint, feel free to send suggestions to Sustainability@kcl.ac.uk. Alternatively, if you see resources being wasted across the estate, e-mail ask@kcl.ac.uk.

Dive into King’s Spotlight on Sustainability podcast

The new series of the Spotlight on Sustainability podcast has landed! In this series, Emily and Abigail will be exploring “Building sustainable communities”. 

Episode 1: How can universities be more inclusive to migrants? With Ria Patel 

In this episode, Ria Patel, founder of the KCL Undoing Borders campaign, Co-Chair of LGBTIQA+ Greens and External Relations Officer for Greens of Colour, talks about the KCL Undoing Borders campaign. This campaign aims to tackle the hostile environment against migrants at universities.  

Episode 2: Why does Equality, Diversity and Inclusion matter? With Sarah Guerra 

In this episode we are very lucky to be joined by Sarah Guerra, Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at King’s to explore what EDI is, why it matters and how you can help make your community accessible for all.

You can access the podcast on Spotify here. We would love to hear your thoughts on this episode; get in touch via the email sustainability@kcl.ac.uk. 

A goodbye from Bethan Spacey, the Sustainability Team’s Engagement Assistant

Selfie of BethMy name is Bethan Spacey and I am a 3rd-year English student and Sustainability Engagement Assistant (SEA). I have been in the SEA role for over a year but am unfortunately leaving now to focus on my studies. It has been an incredible experience and taught me a lot of skills that I will take through to my professional life after graduation.

I started the role in January 2021 and dove straight into the deep-end with Sustainability Month coming up that February. This was a great opportunity for me to get stuck in and involved in a massive Sustainability Team initiative – creating graphics and videos, writing blog posts, managing social media and email communications, etc.

Throughout my time in the team I’ve been able to do this and more, working on various projects and initiatives like Sustainable Living Communities, Shots for Hope and getting our podcast – Spotlight on Sustainability – off the ground. Over the course of the year, I’ve also been involved in writing newsletters, managing video projects, public speaking, interviewing people, liaising with organisations inside and outside of King’s and more.

My main job, however, has been to manage our social media. This has meant producing graphics and videos, writing captions, organising our communications plan and schedule, engaging with the King’s community and collecting data through interactive stories e.g. Instagram polls.

As a part of my role, I introduced weekly spotlights. These are weekly social media posts where we highlight an individual or group at King’s that are doing incredible work within the field of sustainability: joining the Sustainability Team really opened my eyes to how much fantastic sustainability work was already happening. at King’s, so I thought that this would be a great opportunity to foreground that work. I also introduced accessibility features like image descriptions and content warnings, with the goal of making our work as accessible as possible. In addition to this, I relaunched our YouTube channel and encouraged more videos on our social media, as I believe that videos are a quick and easy way to learn about new things and may be more suitable to my generation than lengthy posts or captions.

Despite all of the wonderful experiences and skills that I acquired, I would say that the top one was really understanding what it means to be in a team. I learnt quickly that everything operated at its smoothest when everybody was aware of their personal roles and communicated with each other effectively. I also learnt that it is important to ask for help when you need it; other team members were always willing to step in or provide assistance.

It was a very valuable experience for me and, working within a university, the team understood my obligations to my degree. I would recommend it to anyone who had the opportunity!

King’s Spotlight on Sustainability Podcast

The brand-new King’s Spotlight on Sustainability podcast aims to draw attention to sustainability at King’s and beyond. The goal is to get you thinking about some of the issues and challenges we face regarding climate change and the natural world by highlighting some of the excellent work surrounding sustainability happening at King’s and on a local, national and global level. 

Series 1 focuses on tackling climate change with big and small actions.  

  • Episode 1: What is net-zero carbon and how do we reach it? With Prof Frans Berkhout
  • Episode 2: What is COP26 and why does it matter? With James Baggaly
  • Episode 3: Why and how should you eat more veg? With FetchUrVeg
  • Episode 4: What is the King’s Climate Action Network and why should you get involved? With Maria Rabanser
  • Episode 5: How can you make your wardrobe more sustainable? With Un/Archived Textiles
  • Episode 6: What is fossil fuel divestment and how is King’s leading the change? With KCL XR 

You can access the podcast on Spotify here.   

Climate change, sustainability and narratives

“The truth about stories is that’s all we are.” (Thomas King, 2003)

“Data and factual information are crucial, but not enough to bring down the walls of numbness and indifference, to help us empathise with people outside our tribes. We need emotional connections. But more than that, just as we need sisterhood against patriarchy, we need storyhood against bigotry.” (Elif Shafak, 2020)

Climate change is often constructed as a purely physical phenomenon defined through metrics and targets, and requiring that we all reduce our emissions and limit global temperature rise. While understanding the physical processes of climate change is undeniably crucial, in the 60+ years we’ve been measuring atmospheric CO2 levels inaction has remained the norm, and many people continue to resist caring about an abstract and intangible phenomenon (particularly those who remain largely un-impacted by climate change). Indeed, these framings simplify complex realities by telling only half the story: climate change has both physical realities and cultural meanings and, to better engage people around this issue, we need to reframe it as such.

Climate change is an issue through which a plethora of “values, discourses and imaginaries are being refracted” (Mahony and Hulme, 2016: 395). Not only is it a manifestation of patterns of development and particular socio-environmental relations, but how we respond to the crisis is intimately linked to perceptions, understandings and ideologies. It is a social justice issue, linked to questions of gender, race, inequality, power and health (and the list goes on). It is therefore critical that we ask who creates mainstream knowledge (and by extension, who does not) and “what sorts of realities they aim to engender” (Castree, 2005: xxi). As with many crises, the climate crisis is destabilising the status quo and creating space for transformation and we must harness it as an entry point to understand and address this host of implications.

These ideas have long been echoed by activists, communities and social scientists around the world. Climate researcher Mike Hulme (2020: 311) argues that climate change “governance […] emerges best when rooted in larger and thicker stories about human [experiences].” Indeed, stories have the power to convey culture, history, values and emotions, and forge connections between people. Through storytelling, we have an opportunity to engage in wider and deeper conversations, to make sense of and reconcile differences, and to “[search] out meaning in a conflicted and contradictory world” (Cronon, 1992: 1375). Stories can also “counterpoint […] totalising, ‘grand’ narratives” (Cameron, 2012a: 580) and “re-situate hegemonic habits of mind” (Magrane, 2018: 167). In this sense, stories offer agency. Finally, as put by climate activist Alice Aedy, “storytelling can […] paint a picture of a better world [and] we have to visualise the world that we’re moving towards.”

Let us use this ‘wicked problem’ as an opportunity to question how we relate to each other and how we relate to the natural world, to consider which stories we choose to tell, as well as to recognise the stories of others and what we can learn from them.

Building upon these ideas, we will be sharing  ‘Sustainability Stories’, highlighting the work and passion of individuals from across the King’s community. If you are passionate about any aspect of sustainability and would like to share your story, get in touch with us.

Explore the London Student Sustainability Conference posters

King’s Sustainability Team had the fantastic opportunity to co-host the London Student Sustainability Conference (LSSC) with City, University of London on Wednesday, 24th February 2021. Over 30 students presented their sustainable research and projects through presentations, posters and performances.

The posters from LSSC 2021 can be viewed here. Look out for the poster competition prize winners, including King’s students Liza Konash (BSc Nutrition) and Mia Lewis (BA International Relations) for ‘Best Overall Poster’ for the vegetable bag scheme Fetch Ur Veg.

Recordings of the events can now be found on our Kaltura.

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