Category: Sustainability Champions (Page 8 of 8)

KCL Sustainability: Green Labs

April 13, 2016 /

While King’s has been greatly investing in its broad sustainability agenda, there has also been a drive to innovate in our laboratories. Despite covering just over 10% of our floor space, our labs are spread across all 4 campuses and use a disproportionately large amount of energy and water, as well as produce dangerous chemical waste.

To address this untapped area, Kings has invested in over the past 18 months in a post to lead in this area as well as invested in the projects highlighted. Here are just some of the scheme’s we’ve recently implemented to improve the efficiency of King’s labs.

 Savawatt Installations

This £38,000 installation project saw 584 Savawatt controls being installed into our research fridges and freezers which saves about £15,000 each year (and roughly 68 tonnes of CO2) meaning it pays back its cost in about 2.5 years.

Green Impact: Lab Sustainability Champions

Just like in our King’s offices, our lab staff take part in an awards programme which helps reduce energy, water and general waste across the labs. They also get audited for their work at the end of greeni_logoeach year for an award promoting an environment of commitment to sustainability.

This year 20 teams are participating which is the most laboratory teams for any university in the UK.

Drying Cabinet Exchange

33 old uninsulated drying cabinets were consolidated and replaced by 28 insulated efficient models, paying back our investment in 4 years and achieving £15,000 of annual savings.

blogfumecup Fume Cupboard Management Policy

Already applied to new fume cupboard installations, this technical policy will take over a year to implement but will result in hundreds of thousands of pounds saved!

Cold Storage Policy

Our laboratories are subject to a ‘Cold Storage Policy’ which is used at other universities such as Oxford amongst others. This promotes efficient, safe and sustainable practise for using the research laboratory fridges and freezers.

Current/Future Endeavours

  • Continued installation and refurbishment of fume cupboards and ventilations systems
  • Introduction of Warp-it system for redistributing unwanted resources warpitamong other institutions such as UCL who have been very successful with the system
  • Joint UCL/KCL procurement mini-tenders

 More to come!

Look to our case studies on our labs page for summaries of all the above projects and plenty more to come, including a variety of small projects lead by local lab staff (timer installations, equipment exchanges, UPS installation, freezer warm-ups, waterless condensers and more).

If interested in our growing collection of case studies see here:

You can also contact our Research Efficiency Officer Martin Farley (martin.farley@kcl.ac.uk)

KCL Green Impact Office Audits

April 5, 2016 /

March 31st saw this year’s Sustainability Champions good work be audited by a selection of volunteering students.

What are the Sustainability Champions?

Sustainability Champions are our members of staff promoting sustainable use of their environment for the Green Impact Scheme accreditation.

What is Green Impact?

Green Impact is an NUS lead scheme working with hundreds of organisations to improve workplace sustainability and public engagement. Each team of Sustainability Champions (organised by department) use different criteria from a workbook to go for Gold, Silver or Bronze Awards depending on their achievements.

This was just Green Impacts second year at King’s and we had about 20 office teams across our campuses, and a similar amount of lab teams.

AuditingAudit Team

8 Teams submitted their workbooks (with teams aiming for awards between bronze and gold) on the 25th of March and 8 students volunteered to help audit their work last Thursday. From 9.30am to 1pm our auditors were trained by Jessica Naylor from the NUS with help from their laptops (to keep their work paper-less) before being sent off in teams of two to audit our sustainability champion groups. These were between all campuses from the Strand, to Guy’s to Denmark Hill.

All our auditors did an amazing job and so did our sustainability champions. Small issues are being rectified over the next few weeks but we’re super proud of how it went.

The Green Impact awards will be on 5th of July where our teams will receive their awards and celebrate their achievements.

If you’d like to know more about Sustainability Champions you can find information here.

Charles Pegg, Sustainability Projects Assistant

Sustainability Champions- Culture at King’s

August 17, 2015 /

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.

Plant-cultureStella 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

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 /

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!

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 /

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. image2Overall, 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 /

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.

Sustainable labs at King’s

May 11, 2015 /

Martin_labsThis 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. 

Green Week 2015

February 16, 2015 /

GGW_logo_web.imdex12443Wow, what a week! Green Week has now come to an end but we’ve had a great time and have lots to look forward to at King’s for the rest of 2015! The week was action packed, with lectures, swap shops, films and of course the sustainability roadshow.

The sustainability roadshow, run by us here in King’s Sustainability Team, travelled round the campus starting on Monday at Guy’s, going through Champion Hill, Denmark Hill, Waterloo and ending at Strand campus on the Friday. We had multiple stalls joining throughout the week including RSBP, London Bridge Farmers Market, Lush (from Waterloo and Regent Street), London Vegan Actions and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA). It was great to have so many along and gave us the chance to explore different aspects of sustainability from wildlife, to the products you buy and then the career choices you make.

During the roadshow we asked people to calculate their environmental footprint using the WWF footprint tool, assessing how many planets would be required to sustain the world if everyone lived the same way they did. On average the carbon footprint was 2.5 planets.  Although this is quite high we were able to give people advice and talk to people why they may have a high footprint. Generally the two main factors were eating meat and flying. Some of these of course cannot be avoid (e.g. going home for Christmas!) but we then asked students what they think they could change to improve this.

We then asked students and staff to make a sustainability pledge, of which we managed to collect nearly 100 pledges ranging from eating less meat, to less time in the shower and waking more. It was great to see so many people pledge and hopefully everyone will have fun and success trying to complete them.

We had some great events running throughout the week as well organised by multiple student societies.  EcoSoc and Amnesty at King’s joined forces and ran an event about the Environment and human rights, with speakers from Client Earth, Environmental Justice Foundation and a UK divestment Campaigner.  Over 30 people turned up to the event and a great discussion followed.  There were also talks throughout the week on Shale Gas, Fracking and even a mock debate to end the week.

KCL Stop the Traffik also joined with KCL fashion society and EcoSoc to host King’s own swap shop. Cupcakes and Fairtrade tea were in abundance as students from across King’s swapped clothes that they no longer want.  Everyone left with multiple items they were pleased with, with KCL Stop the Traffik being able to collect multiple postcards petitioning about the lack of transparency in with the production of clothing brands.

The Waterfront Quiz on Thursday also went well.  With our Sustainability round, teams were asked questions such as how many litres of water does it take to make a chocolate bar (its 687 litres in case you were wondering!)  Although points for this round were low it was great to hear the discussion from the questions and hopefully everyone has left now with more knowledge about sustainability.

We also showed a screening of the Best Before film, talking about the food revolution taking over London where locals are fighting back against the supermarkets. Catch the film again in Fairtrade fortnight (23rd February – 8th March) at the Waterfront!

Finally on Friday night to round off Green Week we had King’s Unplugged, shutting down non-essential equipment across Denmark Hill Campus. This was a great evening with over 6 building shutdown on the evening (with help from the building managers and staff at James Black Centre, Centre of Neuroimaging Science and SGDP who shut down their buildings on their own). We are looking forward to the results to see how much we saved during the weekend and are glad that this is becoming normal weekend practice for so many of the offices we audited.

All in all Green Week this year has been fantastic, with events run by societies, KCLSU and King’s sustainability really promoting sustainability across King’s as well as having fun and engaging the student and staff across the campuses.  If you have any suggestions of Sustainability events you would like to see happening or you have any feedback on Green Week 2015 please get in touch with us by emailing sustainability@kcl.ac.uk

Thanks to everyone who got involved!

Calling all Sustainability Champions

December 9, 2014 /
100MSDCF1

Brilliant sustainability tips from King’s staff

This week we’re looking for staff volunteers to help us launch a new initiative, Sustainability Champions. If you have a passion for sustainability and want an opportunity to help drive change at King’s, then this is a great opportunity for you! This initiative seeks to embed sustainability within our departments, offices and labs through the efforts of King’s own staff. Volunteers can create teams of any size, from an entire department to a few colleagues, and will be working with the NUS Green Impact workbook with the full support of the Sustainability team. If you want to learn more and see a list of times and places at which you can drop by to chat with the Sustainability team throughout this week, take a look at our Sustainability Champions page.

This initiative is meant to complement our operational goals and to build on the efforts of King’s staff that have already been championing sustainability. Allison Hunter offers a great example. As Technical Manager for the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, Allison is responsible for technical provision across laboratories and relevant campuses. In this role she has managed to make some truly sustainable strides, and last month she was awarded a prestigious King’s Award for Sustainability. The King’s Awards recognise outstanding achievements of staff members as nominated by staff and students. In this case the Award recognised the successful implementation of a laboratory cold storage energy saving programme, which has saved 250,000kWh, or £25,000, per annum across six research buildings. Indeed, the efforts of staff like Allison can have a tremendous impact on the operations of the College, and we hope that Sustainability Champions will enable many more staff to participate.

What else is sustainable this week? EcoSoc is holding a Christmas dinner Tuesday evening at the Duke of Cambridge to reflect on the year and plan for the next (find details below). This seems a fitting end to an exciting term. Again, if you’re a staff member interested in becoming a Champion, swing by our drop-in sessions for a chat (and some cake!). We’ll be back next week for a final post before the holidays. Until then, keep it sustainable!

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