Category: Events (Page 11 of 11)

Welcome back – a new year and new term

January 12, 2015 /

Welcome back to students and staff – we hope you have had a happy and sustainable holidays!

We are pleased to share with you that King’s reduced our electricity consumption by 43 per cent and gas by 24 per cent compared to normal December usage. The Sustainability Team would like to thank you for all reducing our electricity and gas consumption over the winter break. This resulted in savings of £73,000 and 338 tonnes of CO2. We managed to improve by 24 per cent against the winter break of 2012/13. This is a fantastic achievement but there is still room for improvement.

University-wide efforts are helping us to achieve our energy and carbon reduction targets. Shutting down unnecessary items, including lab equipment, lighting and PCs wherever possible led to this result. This builds on the success of the Blackout project in late 2014. This year we will be aiming to achieve similar savings every holiday, weekend and evening when non-essential equipment, such as lights and computers, are not needed.

Looking forward to the term ahead we have a jam-packed schedule. The Sustainability Champions project is set to officially launch next week, swiftly followed by Green Week, and Fairtrade fortnight. We are looking for enthusiastic people who would like to be involved at driving sustainability at King’s and helping with any of the former mentioned projects.

Fairtrade fortnight is especially important; we will be celebrating 20 years of Fairtrade, King’s is aiming to gain accreditation for being a Fairtrade university. The fortnight will be focusing on core commodities – cocoa, sugar and tea. This is the chance to take action to ensure marginalised farmers around the world have decent working conditions and are paid a fair price for their produce. Watch this space for the full Fairtrade fortnight schedule.

News, stories & interesting bits

Upcoming events

Big energy savings over Blackout weekend

November 18, 2014 /

First things first: A huge thank you to all of the student and staff volunteers that joined us for some serious energy-saving escapades (and a shout-out to those who helped by powering down their rooms as they left for the weekend). Fifteen teams of committed carbon-cutters helped cover fourteen buildings on three King’s campuses Friday evening. It couldn’t have been done without so much help, so thanks very much indeed.

So, how much energy did we manage to save?

King's Blackout results infographic

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The Denmark Hill crew, questioning their own sanity after auditing 130 rooms.

Quite a lot! We switched off 508 computers, 559 monitors, 522 lights and 131 printers, among other things. Overall, Blackout made for a 12% reduction in energy use compared to an average November weekend, amounting to roughly 8 tonnes of carbon saved (and nearly £2000, if anyone is counting). As such, each participant managed to save about 130 kilos of carbon. In one evening! If we did this every weekend, King’s would save 432 tonnes of carbon (and almost £100,000!) in a year. Of course, these numbers could be significantly higher with wider participation across the university. Among buildings we covered, the Henry Wellcome building at Denmark Hill saw the greatest reduction at a massive 46%. The Strand building fared pretty well, too, with a reduction of 21%, while the Macadam saw a 20% reduction.

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One of two Waterloo teams, rightly impressed with themselves after helping to switch off every classroom at FWB.

These are some pretty big numbers. But what do they mean, in everyday terms? Let’s just look at computers. If the 500 computers we switched off were left on over the weekend, they would have produced enough carbon to fill more than four London buses. That would be one stuffy commute! The 550 monitors, meanwhile, use enough energy over a weekend to microwave a little over 10,000 dinners (figures from the Carbon Trust). Of course, these are just a portion of the computers even in the limited spaces we covered. Across the five campuses, there are nearly 1300 student computing stations. That’s a lot of potential energy savings. Indeed, this weekend has clearly demonstrated what a major impact the simple actions of staff and students can have in reducing the College’s energy use. Combining those actions with the College’s own plans for increasing efficiency and reducing emissions can make a huge difference going forward.

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One of many Strand teams, who appear to be having the most fun ever.

Blackout has been a major focus of ours for some time, but it’s not the only thing that Sustainability has been up to. The NUS caught up with our Sustainable Labs Project Coordinator, Martin Farley, to ask him some questions about the importance of laboratories in sustainability, and he offered some insight into what his work entails (labs, by the way, were not included in Blackout). We are all getting ready for the launch of Green Impact next month, which you will read a lot about in this space as things develop. Beginning next week we’ll be offering glimpses into some of the most sustainable minds on campus through profiles of our team members. If you’re interested in what we’re up to, be sure to stay tuned.

Until then, keep it sustainable. And thank you once more to those who helped with Blackout last week!

Upcoming events

Some news and stories

Blackout week is here!

November 10, 2014 /

If you’ve been following us at all over the past few weeks you’ve probably gathered that the NUS Blackout is kind of a big deal. Well, this week it’s finally upon us as dozens of student and staff volunteers will spend their Friday evening patrolling parts of the Strand and Denmark Hill campuses, as well as the Franklin Wilkins Building at Waterloo, looking to switch off all non-essential equipment that has been left running. This will be followed, of course, by a super fun celebration.

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Southampton having the time of their lives last year. This could be you on Friday!

By switching this equipment off – lights, monitors, projectors, etc. – we are aiming to demonstrate just how much energy (not to mention money) King’s can save through the simple actions of staff and students. We posted the data from our pilot shutdown of the building we work out of, Capital House, last Thursday. By switching off unused, non-essential equipment, we observed an overnight reduction of energy use by 33% compared to an average weeknight. Now imagine how much we can save across campuses! It’s remarkable what a difference turning off unused appliances can make. However, this initiative, and the day-to-day changes it will hopefully inspire, forms only one part of of a large effort to meet King’s carbon emissions reduction target (that’s a 43% reduction by 2020 from a 2005-06 baseline). We’ll write more about our goals and how we aim to achieve them here over the coming months, but Blackout is an exciting initiative that will get more people involved right away. By the way, there is still time to volunteer! Just fill out this form and get ready for the time of your life!

We’re also preparing for our second cycling event, which will take place Wednesday, 19 November from 11.00-14.30 at the Guy’s quad. For those dedicated cyclists gearing up for a wonderful winter of active transportation, this event will give you the opportunity to get some free maintenance courtesy of Dr. Bike and to register your beloved bike with the Southwark police, among other things!

We are planning our second Sustainability Forum, too. It will take place on Tuesday, 2 December at Denmark Hill on the topic of green spaces and well-being. More to come on this.

What else is the team up to? Quite a lot, actually. We’re working towards the launch of Green Impact next month (which you’ll read more about here soon) while Sunny, Tom and Martin are immersing themselves in the subcultures of waste & resources, energy and laboratories, respectively. We’ll keep you up to date on these various projects as they develop, too.

Until then, join us for Blackout and keep it sustainable!

Upcoming events

  •  Friday, 14 November, 18.30: NUS Blackout
  • Saturday, 15 November: 2071 and Day of Action at the Royal Court Theatre (2071 running each day until the 15th)
  • Wednesday, 19 November, 11.00-14.30: Cycling event at Guy’s quad

Some news and stories

NUS Blackout 2014!

October 28, 2014 /

NUS blackout logo

Blackout Friday 14 November – please join us!

King’s and KCLSU will be participating in the first UK-wide National Union of Students Blackout on Friday 14 November 2014.

As a university, King’s spends nearly £10 million on utilities per year. Small changes made by staff and students have the potential to dramatically reduce this figure, as well as reducing our carbon footprint and saving energy. For the Blackout, buildings on the Strand, Waterloo and Denmark Hill Campus  will be included in the shutdown (not including labs).

Volunteer

Staff and students can work across the campuses during the Blackout evening. The evening will run from 18.30 until 21.45, and then we will have a small celebration with food and drinks. To volunteer, please fill out our sign up form.

Opt-out form

If you are in a blackout area and have essential equipment that should not be shut off, you need to advise us by completing an opt-out form by Friday 7 November.

If you require any more information please contact us on sarah.hayes@kcl.ac.uk or Olivia.1.james@kcl.ac.uk

Free cycling events at King’s

October 20, 2014 /

Last Wednesday saw Guy’s campus host the first cycling event of the year. New and seasoned cyclists had the opportunity to have a free check up with, local cycling shop On Your Bike‘s Dr Bike, checking bikes are road worthy, and registration with Southwark Police.

If you missed the chance this time, Dr Bike will be back on Wednesday 19 November 2014 at Guy’s for free check up’s and registration. There will also be the chance to exchange places with a HGV, to see the blind spots.

The King’s Sustainability team are relaunching the Bicycle Users Group to create a platform where cyclists around the College can discuss anything to do with cycling. You can sign-up here if you would like join the group.

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News from Fresher’s Week

September 22, 2014 /

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We had a great Fresher’s week meeting multiple societies and a lot of student and staff interested in sustainability at King’s. We gave out free clipper tea, cycling maps, bags, stickers and displaying our L’Occitane hamper that can be won by completing our survey. It was a great success, with over 550 sign-ups over the two days.

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A massive thank you from us goes to EcoSoc, who not only let us share their stall, but helped run a brilliant and successful fresher’s fair (as well as providing some amazing vegan brownies and tasty coconut cupcakes!).

We are looking forward to working with EcoSoc this year, who have their next event this weekend – ‘Escape the city, in the city‘ – a green walk around London.

We hope to see lots of you at our first event as well- the first of the sustainability forum! This is looking at sustainability in business, with two guest speakers from Elephant Branded and ENTO.

We hope you had a great Fresher’s week and look forward to seeing you throughout the year! small2

The sustainability team

Recap panel discussion: a sustainable future – mission possible?

March 3, 2014 /

Green Week 2014 was an action packed week. There were events scheduled at every campus in order to reach out to as many people as possible. One of the concluding events of the Green Week was the panel discussion at Strand. The topic was ‘A GGW_logo_web.imdex12443sustainable future – mission possible?’ The distinguished panel comprised of both internal and external speakers – Aaron Re’em,  Senior Account Director from TRUCOST, Dr. Nate Matthews from the Department of Geography and Prof. Mischa Dohler from the Department of Informatics at King’s. The panel tackled a wide range of questions ranging from the the need for a new definition for sustainability to the role of the private sector and governments. They shared examples of the need for critical change in several areas but it was most heartening to hear the positive examples they shared as well.  Here are three positive examples shared by the speakers

1. A compelling business case may be the missing link to a sustainable future

The Carbon War Room analysed several technologies which had the potential to advance the low-carbon economy on a big scale. They looked for specific reasons why such technology hadn’t been adopted yet in the most polluting sectors and found that in many cases, it was simply a matter of poor communication and the need to create a compelling business case. For instance, the shipping industry is known to be a very big polluter. The industry uses raw diesel and cities with ports are usually extraordinarily polluted.

Although the technology exists to reduce this problem, the missing link lay in lack of market information. The company has recently launched operation shipping efficiency which aims to reduce carbon emissions by bridging gaps in market information related to environmental efficiency, encouraging key stakeholders to embed efficiency into decision making, and unlocking capital flow for technology retrofits.  They found that through this there was potential for the shipping industry to save $70 Billion per year on fuel and reduce carbon and other pollutants by 30 percent.

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Join Green Week at King’s!

January 13, 2014 /

Green Week is an annual national week of action on climate change at universities across the UK. Held from 10 – 16 February 2014, the week is about raising awareness of sustainability issues and offers an opportunity for students and staff to take part in exiting events and explore ways they can make a difference.

The Sustainability team and KCLSU will organise activities and campaigns on energy, water, food, waste and transport across King’s campuses. We will also offer a peek into the world of sustainable careers, host free bike events and join in with national campaigns Meat-free Monday and the Student Switch Off.

Green Week is a great opportunity to get involved and help organise activities and campaigns at your campus. Whether you would like to showcase your society, present your work or host an event, we are happy to help and spread the word to King’s students and staff (have a look at the People & Planet website for some inspiration). You can also join the team on the day to help out as a Green Week Ambassador. Just get in touch with your event or activity ideas!

We look forward to seeing you there,

The Sustainability team

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Join us at the first King’s Sustainability Forum

October 17, 2013 /

Welcome to our new blog. We’ll be keeping you informed and inspired about sustainability activities at King’s College and we’ll always be open to any guest blog offers from staff, students or alumni. Just get in contact with us.

In the meantime the first thing we wanted to do was get the word out and invite you to our new Sustainability Forum. The first meeting is aimed at students as we had a great response at the Freshers’ Fair but staff are more than welcome to attend and we’ll make sure that we cater more directly for staff over the year.

Meet the team, share your ideas and learn about opportunities to get involved! We will be joined by Felix Spira, entrepreneur at rootAbility, a social business focusing on sustainability in the higher education sector.

Felix Spira

Felix Spira- the man himself!

As a student he co-founded the successful Green Office at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. He will share his experiences and offer some inspiration and ideas on how to make an impact at university!

The Green Office set up and run by students at Maastricht university

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