Wow, 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!
