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

July 25, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

Hello 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.

King’s Food Awarded 3 Stars by Food Made Good Report

July 15, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

Good news alert!

The Sustainability Restaurant Association (SRA), through the Food Made Good report, celebrate all the ways that the business is succeeding on the road to sustainability, while helping to lay out a path toward continual improvement. This year, King’s received three stars with an overall score of 80%.

The SRA’s Food Made Good rating sets out a 10 key area framework for continual improvement on sourcing, society and the environment. In 2018, King’s received one star from the SRA, with an overall score of 59%. In 2019, we achieved our second star, with an overall rating of 68%. There was no rating carried out in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the hospitality industry. We are thrilled that King’s increased its score by 12% this year compared to the 2019 report, achieving an overall score of 80% and gaining a third star. This represents a 12% increase since our last report.

As the image below shows, King’s received a 75% score for sourcing, 86% for society, and 81% for environment. Since the last report in 2019, we improved our performance across all 10 key areas, but the largest increase was in feeding people well (33% increase), wasting no food (22% increase), and supporting global farmers (21% increase).

Source: 2022 SRA Report

We would like to congratulate the King’s Food team for this great achievement and are excited to see more developments to come.

Further links:

Follow @kclfood and @kings_sustainability on Instagram to stay up-to-date
Read the full report from the SRA here.

Sustainable education at King’s Academy Festival

July 13, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

This blog post was written by Tasnia Yasmin, King’s Sustainability Projects Assistant.

The King’s Academy Learning & Teaching Festival is an annual event which celebrates education and learning across King’s. I presented the education for sustainable development (ESD) work that the Sustainability team have been working on over this last year. This included our KEATS Sustainability & Climate module as well as our Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Curriculum mapping. These were both 2 workshops which linked to the key themes of the festival which were sustainable education as well as co-creation with students.

Both workshops were taken very well. Many were impressed with our student co-creation model for the KEATS Sustainability & Climate module and how well we have done since its inception earlier this year (122 completed the module!). From the seminars organised alongside the module to the quizzes and interactive elements of the module; it showed everyone how broad and intersectional sustainability truly is.

Staff feedback from the SDG Mapping session also showed that ESD is something that they are wanting to actively incorporate into teaching and learning within modules and the faculty. As a team we are actively looking for opportunities to help staff and students embed sustainability into their module; it’s not something that sits separately but needs to be weaved into everything. Everything can be tied to sustainability whether it is social justice, the climate crisis or looking at circular economies.

This was followed by an in-person day with poster presentations and further workshops. I presented the key findings of the SDG Mapping which included how colleagues could look at working in ESD to their own teaching as well as wider commitments from the college. It was great seeing everyone and being able to network with colleagues who wanted to work together to further sustainability and inclusivity.

All this work furthers on from a previous ESD report that we did in 2014 and we have seen and made progress since then. Many students themselves have led societies with specific sustainable education areas and colleagues have been including sustainability within their curricula from English to Dentistry. We are hoping we can connect and work with more students and staff to help them embed and develop sustainability within learning.

Smart freezer management goes a long way

July 8, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

This guest blog comes courtesy of Martin Farley, King’s Sustainable Research Manager.

Ultra-low temperature (ULT) freezers are an essential resource in medical science, as they allow biological samples and vaccines to be preserved safely at very low temperatures. Many lifesaving vaccines, including the Pfizer (COVID-19) vaccine, require ULT freezers for storage and they are vital to research laboratories, including ours here at King’s, where we have over 550!

Like any cooling, freezers are extremely energy intensive, particularly ULT freezers. Depending on their age and model, these freezers can use the same amount of energy as the average UK home and require further energy to cool the spaces they occupy. Beyond the impact of energy consumption, cold storage devices utilise refrigerant gases, which are HFCs. While these gases are far less harmful on the environment than their predecessors (CFCs), they can still wreak havoc if released into the environment. In the UK, there are regulations in place to avoid their release, but old equipment can still lead to leakages.

So, what can we do to manage our ULT freezers sustainably?

Procure energy efficient freezers – To start, we can aim to purchase more efficient units. At King’s, we promote sustainable procurement both through our tender process and sustainable lab programme (LEAF).
Manage samples efficiently – Storing our samples efficiently means we can maximise our freezer space. King’s Department of Women & Children’s Health have recently transformed their sample management system by adopting microtubes that take up less than half the space of previously used containers. This has had the dual effect of increasing the internal capacity of each freezer and reducing the volume of plastic required. Shared around the college, this practice is now being adopted by others, including groups within the School of Basic & Biomedical Sciences.
Store only what we need – By removing samples that are no longer needed we can consolidate our holdings. To support this, King’s Freezer Replacement Scheme offers to pay for new, ultra-efficient, fully-racked ULT freezer if researchers can consolidate the contents of freezers in their area, so that two older freezers can be taken away in exchange for one new energy efficient one. This scheme aims to reduce carbon emissions and encourage the adoption of efficient management systems.
Good housekeeping – Smart freezer management goes a long way! Our Good Practice Guide provides some great tips and tricks on maintenance such as defrosting and clearing filters.
Reduce the temperature – Check what temperature the freezers are set at. While many operate at -80°C, historically they all were set to -70° That 10°C difference leads to an impressive 25-30% in energy saving, and has been implemented in some of King’s sites like the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases.

As our research and laboratory practices grow, we must ensure that consideration is given to the impacts on the environment and integrating sustainable practices such as those listed above is crucial to delivering impactful research, while minimising our environmental impact. Whether you are directly involved in freezer management, or have a supporting role, we can all play a part in sharing this knowledge and raising awareness amongst our peers, which in turn can go a long way in creating a wider mindfulness about their environmental impact and how we can support a more sustainable infrastructure at King’s.

King’s maintains Fairtrade University status – and gains a star

July 7, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

This blog post was written by Maria Rabanser, King’s Sustainability Officer.

King’s College London and KCLSU have been re-certified as a Fairtrade University by the Fairtrade Foundation and Students Organising for Sustainability UK (SOS-UK), achieving two stars in our recent student-led audit.

The Fairtrade University scheme promotes fair and ethical consumption in universities. Universities taking part have to meet a set of mandatory criteria, such as offering Fairtrade coffee and tea as standard, and holding events for Fairtrade Fortnight. In addition, there are criteria on leadership and strategy, campaigning and influencing, procurement, retail and catering, and research and curriculum.

Since earning our first star in 2020, we have worked on our 2020-2022 Fairtrade Action Plan with the aim of achieving two stars in our 2022 audit. For example, King’s Food continuously look for new Fairtrade products and ingredients to add to their menus and outlets. Rather than only offering Fairtrade for branded products such as chocolate bars, King’s Food source Fairtrade cocoa and sugar for use in their kitchens, meaning many of the in-house baked goods on sale from outlets include Fairtrade ingredients. During International Coffee Week in 2021, King’s Food invited their coffee supplier Bewley’s to speak to students and staff about the sourcing of their coffee, and during Fairtrade Fortnight 2022 they offered Fairtrade pancakes on Pancake Day. The King’s Sustainability team offers support and data for students who would like to research ethical supply chains or consumption as part of their dissertations, collaborates with other Fairtrade universities on ideas and events, and ensures fair and ethical trade are considered in university-wide initiatives such as the King’s Climate Action Network.

If you would like to get involved in our Fairtrade work, there are many opportunities to do so. Our Fairtrade and Sustainable Food Steering Group is open to all at King’s, and meets four times per year to discuss food sustainability and Fairtrade at King’s and KCLSU. We are also encouraging students or student societies who would like to collaborate on events on ethical consumption, trade justice or Fairtrade to get in touch with us. If you would like to learn more, or have ideas for how we can further promote Fairtrade at King’s, contact us at sustainability@kcl.ac.uk.

An update from Tasnia Yasmin, King’s Sustainability Projects Assistant

July 6, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

Hello all,

My long-awaited blog and introduction to the team is finally here (despite me working for 10 months…). My name is Tasnia and I work as a Sustainability Project Assistant in the Sustainability team here at King’s. I mainly focus on sustainable education and looking at how we can improve access to sustainable education across the curriculum at King’s (formally and informally). I work closely with students and staff to achieve this because student co-creation is at the heart of most of our projects – we want to give opportunities to students to both get involved in making a difference at King’s, develop skills and facilitate peer-to-peer learning.

The main project which I worked on was the Sustainable Development Goal Curriculum Mapping which mapped how education for sustainable development and SDGs sat across the curriculum at King’s. This involved over 60 students mapping ~1000 modules! This helped us develop a baseline of what and where sustainable education currently sits at King’s and how we can embed it more. I’m also working on our KEATS Climate & Sustainability module which is another opportunity for students to learn about sustainability outside of their own courses.

I’m also an alumnus (BSc Geography, 2020) as well as a previous KCLSU Student Officer (Welfare & Community, 2020/2021). I’ve always been super keen on learning about climate, the environment and sustainability and loved my undergraduate. I was even lucky enough to do a 10 day fieldwork trip around Morocco (10 cities in 10 days!). My time as officer was also a very interesting experience – seeing how decisions get made and knowing that I am the student representative in a lot of these conversations was very empowering.

I’ve been a student, sabbatical officer and now a staff member at King’s – I feel like I’ve seen the college from every angle you can see it from!

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

July 5, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

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.

Student Auditors for Sustainability Champions

May 30, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

Last week, students from a variety of degree backgrounds volunteered as Student Sustainability Auditors. They received IEMA approved training on sustainability auditing, which they then used to audit teams of Sustainability Champions at King’s across two days. Find out more about the Sustainability Champions programme here.

We asked the students how they found the experience:

May be an image of 7 people, people standing and indoor

“Training was very helpful and well presented. Using this method to evaluate organizations in sustainability efforts will be beneficial in future interactions personally and professionally. A very insightful experience.”

“I have enjoyed this opportunity to learn more about what different departments are doing at King’s and how they are able to improve this. It was also good to be able to meet fellow students with a similar interest in the topic.”

“I really enjoyed the training and met interesting people. It was really exciting to look into all the meaningful work the sustainability team and the sustainability champions are doing.”

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

May 17, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

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.

Mental health and sustainability – what’s the link?

May 10, 2022 / Jone De Roode Jauregi

This blog post has been adapted from a post written last year by Helena Fazeli for Mental Health Awareness Week. Trigger warning – this blog discusses mental health and suicide.

Mental Health Awareness Week (9-15 May 2022) is the UK’s national week to raise awareness of mental health and mental health problems. The theme this year is loneliness and the week aims to raise awareness of the impact of loneliness on our mental health and the practical steps we can take to address it.

How do mental health and sustainability intersect?

#1 SDG 3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all

One of Sustainable Development Goal Three’s (SDG 3) targets is to “reduce by one-third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being”. Awareness of the importance of addressing mental health has increased in recent years, and rightly so: depression represents one of the leading causes of disability, suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst 15-29-year-olds, and people with severe mental health conditions are at risk of premature death due to preventable physical conditions (WHO, 2021). Additionally, individuals with mental health conditions may face stigma, discrimination and human rights violations.

While SDG 3 focuses explicitly on mental health, achieving this target requires progress across all 17 SDGs. Mental health and wellbeing are intricately linked to challenges such as poverty, inequality, work, education, gender, infrastructure, air pollution, access to quality green spaces, peace etc. Not only do these factors increase the risk of poor mental health, but they also impact the accessibility and quality of mental health services.

One example is emergency contexts, including natural disasters, conflict and forced migration, during which many individuals will face temporary distress. In the longer term, the prevalence of common mental disorders generally doubles in a humanitarian crisis due to increased poverty, lack of security, separation from family, community and home, and trauma. Overall, it has been estimated that 1 in 5 people living in an area affected by conflict will have a common mental health condition. Finally, it is important to note that climate change is expected to exacerbate many of these issues, thus causing greater and wider distress, which leads us to our next topic…

#2 Climate change and mental health

When you think about climate change, mental health might not be the first thing that comes to mind. We often discuss climate change on a global scale, in terms of physical processes and tangible, measurable impacts. However, it both directly and indirectly impacts individuals’ and communities’ mental health and psychological well-being.

Indeed, climate change and its associated impacts (rising sea levels, changing temperatures, extreme weather patterns, wildfires, droughts, food and water insecurity, etc.) put at risk a range of phenomena that people and communities value and rely on in their daily lives, both material and non-material, from homes, landscapes and ecosystems to cultural traditions, livelihoods, identities and social cohesion… From forced displacement to gradual changes in an environment, feelings of loss – loss of place, loss of identity, decreased sense of self – can arise. And, as mentioned above, these impacts are more acutely felt in communities and populations where climate change intersects with pre-existing health conditions, socioeconomic inequities and unequal power dynamics.

#3 The rise of eco-anxiety

As with many crises, the climate crisis is causing (justifiably) strong emotional responses, in people and communities around the world. Amongst inspiration and hope for change, feelings of anger, hopelessness, guilt and fear are common and natural.

Eco-anxiety refers to the stress caused by “watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold” or the “feelings of helplessness, anger, […] panic and guilt toward the climate and ecological crisis”. Force of Nature has been studying the occurrence of eco-anxiety amongst youth globally. They found that amongst 500 respondents, over 70% had experienced feelings of hopelessness in the face of climate change.

In recognition of the interconnectedness between the health of our minds, bodies and planet, last year’s Mental Health Awareness Week’s theme was indeed nature. This demonstrates how sustainability refers not only to environmental sustainability but also to social sustainability.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed by the immensity of the climate crisis, be kind to yourself, and connect with your loved ones and your community. However, if symptoms of anxiety are interfering with your ability to function well and feel good, we encourage you to seek professional help. Here are some ways you can find support at King’s: KCLSU’s wellbeing events, Positive Peers, Counselling and Mental Health support, Black Students Talk, Out-of-hours counselling. You can also find resources here and here.

Get involved this Mental Health Awareness Week

Join the Mental Health & Climate Change seminar (13 May)

What are the links between mental health and climate change? What is eco-anxiety? And how can we go about overcoming this?

To mark the UK mental health awareness week, King’s Sustainability will be joined by neuroscientist Dr Kris De Meyer for a lean-forward seminar on mental health & climate change. According to Kris, the best way to combat eco-anxiety is opening up pathways to action, to give the sense that we are not powerless and that we can indeed do something that is meaningful and can make a difference.

Kris will briefly explain the brain basis of eco-anxiety before diving into interesting break-out room activities exploring how to cope with it. Join this interactive seminar led by an expert on eco-anxiety to build your own eco-anxiety “toolkit” by identifying what your personal pathway to action might be in a safe, positive environment.

Kris is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s Department of Neuroimaging and the Director of the UCL Climate Action Unit.

This seminar is part of a series that runs monthly between October ‘21 and June ’22 covering some of the biggest topics in sustainability. If you would like to stay in the loop about upcoming seminars, please sign up here. These seminars are linked to the KEATS Sustainability module which we are piloting this year. You can enrol on the module here.

KCLSU’s Take Time Out (3-20 May)

Take Time Out is taking place until the 20th of May and aims to encourage you to schedule in some time, away from your studies, to boost your wellbeing, take a break and connect with the King’s community. See all events here.

More opportunities at King’s

This coming week, King’s wants to focus on what we can do individually and as a community to foster connections and support each other. Access King’s gyms and BeActive programme for free and join the events on journaling, connecting with charities, a virtual coffee morning, or one of the mindfulness sessions. Find out more here.