Tag: 2018 (Page 2 of 3)

King’s Sustainability Awards 2018

July 20, 2018 /

It’s been a busy year and last week on 10 July we had the pleasure of celebrating the achievements of everyone who has been actively involved in sustainability over the past year here at King’s.

The annual King’s Sustainability Awards ceremony took place at Bush House and we celebrated the passion and commitment of the 235 Sustainability Champions who have carried out 1,950 sustainability actions, nearly 500 more than the previous year.

45 Sustainability Champion Teams were awarded: 16 Bronze, 11 Silver and 18 Gold Awards.


We also celebrated with Special Awards for other staff and students from across the university who have worked to embed sustainability across operations, teaching and the wider King’s community.

Working Towards Gold: 1st Floor James Black Center Labs
Best at Recruiting New Champions: Cardiology, Pharmacy Teaching
Outstanding Achievement: 5th Floor JCMB, The Dickson Poon School of Law
Supporting King’s Food in the Sustainable Restaurant Association: Ali Hepple & Izzy Brayshaw
Supporting the Analysis of Sustainability Data: Analytics
Commitment to Embedding Sustainability: Operational Assurance
Commitment to Sustainability: Bouygues, CIS, Procurement, Servest
Commitment to Waste Reduction and Re-Use (via Warp It): Bush House Project Team
Commitment to Sustainability as Energy Champions: Abdul Lateef, Graham Camplin, Kurosh Bastani, Nick Gouveia
Consistently Achieving Highest Monthly Recycling Rates: King’s Sport
Commitment to Sustainable Campus Refurbishment: Natalie Littleson
Working to Embed Sustainability in Capital Development: Olga Ezquieta
Commitment to Implementing Sustainable Lab Practices: Oliver Austen
Commitment to Sustainability & Wellbeing: Robert Staton
Most Improved Recycling Rates: Stamford Street Apartments
Commitment to Biodiversity: Stuart Bailey
Going Above & Beyond: Library Services

Sustainability Awards 2018 – Staff and student champions

Serve to shape and transform

We welcomed Professor Jonathan Grant, Vice President & Vice Principal (Service) who thanked all involved for being the ones to motivate others and to stand up and make a difference to the environment and our local communities around King’s.  ‘Service’ is the term we adopted at King’s in our Strategic Vision 2029 to describe our commitment to society beyond the traditional roles of education and research. Professor Grant shared details of the King’s Service Strategy framework and explained that the Sustainability Champions are an integral part of the framework.   The Service Strategy framework will be launched and celebrated on 19 July and all King’s staff and students are welcome to attend.

Sustainability is important to our students

As part of the event we celebrated our students who’ve been involved with a video showcasing their actions over the past year which includes working with King’s Food as Sustainable Food Assistants, auditing our Sustainability Champions teams, taking part in Student Switch Off actions and competitions in King’s Residences, working as Sustainable Food Assistants and running social enterprises such as Zest and Fetch Ur Veg- who offer weekly organic veg box deliveries.

National Sustainability Awards

We saved a surprise for Awards day and our Library Sustainability Champions teams found out  that they had been nominated as finalists at the national EAUC Green Gown Awards, recognising the impact that they have had by making the libraries more sustainable for both staff and students. This year we now have 3 finalists at the Green Gown Awards, including Widening Participation’s Parent Power project and King’s Food for their work on ditching disposables.

THANK YOU

Thank you once again to everyone who has helped us make a difference here at King’s this year. The efforts of all those involved really do add up and help to achieve our university sustainability targets. Achievements this year include:

  • 30% carbon reduction achieved (by July 2017) which is keeping us on track to achieve the 43% carbon reduction goal by 2020 (2017/18 figures will be shared once available)
  • Improving waste recycling rates by nearly 10%
  • Reusing furniture and equipment internally at King’s – saving it from disposal and saving £96k in 2017/18
  • 36 events held by staff and students in Sustainability Week and Reduce Waste Week

If you would like to find out more about becoming a Sustainability Champion contact the Sustainability Team at sustainability@kcl.ac.uk.

Training as a Climate Reality Leader

June 29, 2018 /

Hello from Maria from the King’s Sustainability team! For today’s blog, I wanted to share an exciting event I attended over the last three days.

This week, I attended the Climate Reality Project Leadership Corps Training. The three day event is organised by the Climate Reality Project, founded by former US Vice President Al Gore. Its aim is to train people from all over the world to be leaders in the fight against climate change, and the training events were featured in 2017’s ‘An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power’.

In Berlin, over 600 new Climate Reality Leaders were trained over three days. The days included a number of presentations and panel debates on climate change and issues around it. As the first day of the training coincided with the first meeting of the German Coal Commission, coal was one of the key themes during the event. A panel on how Germany – and the rest of Europe – can leave coal behind in favour of renewables included an emotional account from a citizen whose village is due to make way for an expanding coal mine. You can read more about Germany’s disappearing villages here. Despite the need for Europe to move away from coal, another panel acknowledged the challenges countries relying on coal for energy face in their transition. Many European countries will need to look at how they can turn their economy around while ensuring former coal industry workers are ready to move into jobs in other industries.

One highlight of the training was to see Al Gore present his now famous slide deck on the climate crisis and its solutions. For over two hours, he explained the science behind climate change, the impact it has on the world right now – and will likely have in the future – and the solutions that already exist. While countless images of environmental destruction and disasters around the world may make it seem like there is no hope, recent developments in renewable energy show that it is not too late to change our path. For example, in June 2017 Scotland sourced 100% of its electricity from wind power for a whole month, and countries around the world are scaling up their solar capacity. In the UK, countless local authorities have pledged to go 100% renewable in the future. Hope was a defining theme of the training, with presenters and panellists reminding the trainees that it is possible to tackle the climate crisis.

A particularly inspiring moment showing changing attitudes was during a Q&A session on the climate crisis presentation. When the audience was asked to raise their hand if they do not own a car, the majority of the room raised their hand. You can see a picture of this moment here.

As a now newly trained Climate Reality Leader, I am excited to go out and campaign on climate change. Climate Reality Leaders are asked to complete Acts of Leadership following their training, which can include anything from giving a presentation to writing a letter to their elected representatives. The Leadership Corps is also a thriving community, with regional and local chapters organising meetings, and assisting and mentoring one another to tackle climate change together. This community element was also central to the three days of training, with each of us encouraged to meet and connect with fellow Climate Reality Leaders from around the world. It was inspiring to see so many people from different industries and all ages coming together to solve one big challenge!

If this has inspired you to become a Climate Reality Leader yourself, you can follow Climate Reality on Facebook and Twitter to make sure you don’t miss any upcoming trainings. The next one is due to take place in Los Angeles in August, with applications open now.

Win Prizes with Warp It

June 28, 2018 /

So far King’s has saved over £140,978 since we launched Warp It in 2016 and we’re giving you prizes to help to make that number even bigger!

How can you win?

We’re giving you prizes to share as many items as possible on Warp It. The user who uploads the most items by the 12 July 2018 will win a goodie bag of vegan treats!

What exactly is Warp It?

Warp It is a Freecycle style online platform that allows staff members from inside King’s to share unwanted furniture, office and lab equipment they no longer need. Every time an item is added to Warp It it is then available for staff members across King’s to claim, meaning that unwanted, good quality items are no longer being thrown away.

Did you know…?

Lab equipment can be put on to Warp It as well! Everything from electronic equipment to glassware can be shared and claimed on the platform.

Why is it important?

Warp It not only helps us to reduce the amount of waste that we produce, but it also saves users a large amount of time and money that they would otherwise have spent on purchasing new items. It helps to promote the ethos of reuse, reduce, recycle at King’s and encourages staff members to think about what they purchase, before they purchase it.

So far at King’s we have:

  • Saved over £140,978
  • Saved over 58,259kg of CO2, which would normally arise from waste disposal and buying new items
  • Avoided over 20,292kg of waste
  • Kept the equivalent of 25 cars off the road and saved 79 trees

Sign up to Warp It and start winning prizes today!

Sophia Courtney, Sustainability Projects Assistant

Thank you for a successful Reduce Waste Week

May 18, 2018 /

Well, what a week. We in the Sustainability Team had a raucous time shouting about waste as part of our Reduce Waste Week. Our aim was to reach out to the idle public and hit them with games, workshops and community events to engage, shock, and enlighten them to the growing waste problem and the need to REDUCE the amount we create in our everyday lives. Waste is a choice and not a given so we armed ourselves with facts, ideas and a giant raspberry costume and delved headfirst into the King’s community.

Our first event was a workshop on making your own toiletries. This DIY Lush event was fabulous with Sophia concocting a dreamy coconut and coffee grounds face scrub and a pure peppermint and bicarb toothpaste. All made with natural ingredients and in re-usable pots so we can say goodbye to Colgate and toothpaste tubes!

Our second event was the incredible Disco Soup. What is a Disco Soup you might ask? Well, we make soup – to Disco music! We hooked up with Plan Zheroes to scour Borough Market for food that was going to be thrown away by street vendors and collect it for donation. We then scurried back to set up shop in The Shed and had student volunteers prepare the veg while the marvellous SU chef cooked up a carrot soup, mushroom soup and coleslaw. We also manage to get our hands on two bins bags of artisan bread which usually sells at £4 a pop! It’s incredible the amount of food is thrown away – 25% of all farmed food is thrown away!!

Interspersed with these events we had pop-ups where we highlighted the issue of single-use items and how, if they’re not recycled or re-used, can stay in the environment for hundreds if not millions of years!!

In between all of this we were dressing up as fruit and pratting around, having a good time raising awareness about waste and how the only real way to solve the waste problem is to not create it in the first place.

Sophia Courtney, Sustainability Projects Assistant

Gain experience as an environmental auditor

May 4, 2018 /

The Sustainability Team is currently looking for volunteers to help with the environmental audits of our Office Staff Sustainability Champions on the 21st and 22nd of May. All volunteers will receive IEMA approved training and audit two staff champions. This is an opportunity to get training and auditing experience, valuable for future careers in sustainability and employability in general.

Both days will be split into two parts. The morning will consist of an IEMA approved training session. This will be followed by the auditing sessions, where volunteers will be paired up and visit Champions Teams to evaluate how they meet our sustainability criteria. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

To find out more and sign up, please email sustainability@kcl.ac.uk, confirming which of the days – or both – you are able to attend.

Sophia Courtney, Sustainability Projects Assistant

Our Fundraising and Supporter Development Sustainability Champions are raising the bar

April 18, 2018 /

This week’s guest blog comes courtesy of Zoe Long. Zoe is a MA student studying Climate Change: History, Culture and Society at King’s.

The Sustainability Champions from the Fundraising and Supporter Development Team have been working incredibly hard all year to reduce their office’s impact on the environment. This year they are working towards the Silver Sustainability Champion Award. Their Chair Caitlyn Lindsay took some time to explain what they’ve been up to.

The Fundraising and Supporter Development Department raise money for the university and affiliated hospitals including Guy’s Cancer Centre, Evelina Children’s, Maudsley Mental Health and St Thomas. The team is comprised of around 120 staff in the Virginia Woolf Building and raise money through a series of events, alumni funding and telephone campaigns.

The Sustainability Champions’ main focus has been raising awareness of environmental issues and the small ways people can make a change but have a big impact. Some of the events organised this year include:

  • Swap Shop: A clothing exchange to recycle wearable but unwanted clothes, finding them a new home and reducing waste going to landfill. This provides also great alternative to buying new items. Money raised from this event was donated to Crisis to buy a safe place for someone stay at Christmas. Any leftover clothes were donated to Smart Works and Oxfam.
  • Craft Fair: Fabric scraps and coffee pods were recycled, crafted and sold in aid of Evelina Children’s Hospital. Another great idea to divert materials from the waste stream.
  • January Walking Challenge: To beat the January blues staff in the office were challenged to walk the furthest, competing both individually and in teams. The initiative was a real success, spawning some healthy competition and encouraging people to swap their commute or get off a few stops earlier. Walking is good for the body, mind and planet!
  • Food Bank Collection: A drive for dry goods and sanitary products saw two boxes of goods being donated to the Waterloo food bank just in time for Christmas.
  • Air Quality Monitoring: The Team is taking part in a Citizen Science scheme run by Friends of the Earth in collaboration with King’s College London to measure air quality in London. Look out for the test tube on Kingsway measuring the air pollution score. The scheme is also designed to prompt thinking about the ways in which we can improve air quality in the city.

Sustainability Week saw the Champions make a special effort to reduce the office’s impact on the environment, events included:

  • Meatless Monday Lunch: Exploring meat-free diets to reduce stress on the planet’s environmental resources.
  • Plastic Free Tuesday Quiz: An interactive way to raise awareness of the many ways in which we can cut down on our plastic use.
  • Power Down Friday: A push to switch off monitors as well as computers at the end of the week to save power. This raises awareness of the many ways in which energy is being consumed in

So far the efforts have been enthusiastically received in the office. Next year the team is aiming to build on their success and achieve the Sustainability Champion Gold Award by focusing on procurement, consumption, and reducing printing.

We visited Westminster Waste

April 6, 2018 /

Last year King’s produced over 1888 tonnes of construction waste. With projects happening all over the university, from small refurbishments to major redevelopments  at Bush House and the Science Gallery, making sure that we properly dispose of any  construction waste produced on our sites is  important in helping to minimise our impact on the environment. So, what happens to  our construction waste? Working with our main contractors we aim to make sure our waste is managed responsibly. One of the sites that construction waste from our sites ends up at is  Westminster Waste’s depot near Greenwich. We visited the depot last month to see what happens.

In order to track the amount of waste produced,  and so that we know where it ends up, drivers log ‘Waste Transfer Notes’ for every collection detailing what they take away and when. All the lorries are weighed as they arrive at  the waste management plant, to make sure that we know exactly how much construction waste we are producing.

Once the  construction waste has arrived at the site it is sorted and processed by Westminster Waste. First of all large items are sorted out, then it is fed through  a trommel, which works like a giant sieve to sort timber into different sizes so that it can then be separated by its grading. The grade of the timber  dictates how Westminster Waste process it. All of the grade B timber, which is the most common type used in construction, is sorted and then used for biomass fuel for renewable energy in the UK.  Metals are re-melted directly into products worldwide. Similarly, all the plastics that are removed are either separated and reground into feedstock or reprocessed into new plastic products. After all this processing there is a small amount of residual waste left that cannot be recycled. This is shredded and proceed into high grade Solid Recovered Fuel which is then used for renewable power generation.

Whilst construction waste doesn’t count towards our 70% recycling target, since that only measures operational waste that students and staff can affect, it is important for us to know the waste generated by contractors on our sites is managed responsibly.

To read more about our commitments and objectives for responsible waste and resources management, see our Waste Management Policy.

For further guidance on recycling in King’s buildings, see our A-Z guide.

 

 

 

 

 

Become a Committee Member for Fetch Ur Veg

March 26, 2018 /

Are you interested in helping to promote sustainable food at King’s, as well as gaining experience at running a unique enterprise?

Fetch Ur Veg is a student-led food co-op, providing fresh, organic vegetable bags to students and they are currently looking for new committee members to take over from next year. As a committee member you will have the opportunity to gain practical experience on how small enterprises are run, as well as encouraging healthy, sustainable lifestyles to students on campus.

If you’re interested in any of the following roles please apply online.

Sustainability Week Careers Event

March 19, 2018 /

This week’s guest blog comes courtesy of Zoe Long. Zoe  is a MA student studying Climate Change: History, Culture and Society at King’s.

(The views presented do not necessarily reflect those of King’s Sustainability.)

The Discover Careers in Sustainability event on Monday night kicked off the series of evening events part of King’s Sustainability Week. Full of useful information about future careers, the panel was formed of a range of professionals already working in the sector in various capacities. Sitting on the panel:

• Kat Thorne – Head of Sustainability for King’s College London
• Veda Karandikar – Senior Associate in the Sustainability and Climate Change consulting department at PwC
• David Lourie – Director of Good Business
• Iyesogie Igiehon – Associate in the Global Environmental and Regulatory Law Group at Allen & Overy

For those who could not attend the event, here is a summary of some of the best advice.

Was your first job you dream job?
The overwhelming response was no. Instead, the advice was to focus on the role and the skills it can help you to develop. Considering why the job does not suit you can help shape where you want to be next.

Each panel member has a very different background and route to sustainability, however, they were united by the fact that none of them actually intend to work in the sector. Instead, each person followed a career route led by their interests and networking!

How can you find jobs in smaller, harder to find companies? 
Recruitment consultants a good place to start; there are lots of niche recruitment firms, but Acre was mentioned specifically. Whilst they may not have specific graduate roles, a role may come up once in a while and by talking to recruiters you are putting your name out there. Escape the City was also brought up as a place to look for less traditional roles. Twitter, LinkedIn and any social media accounts are often sources of niche roles that may not be advertised elsewhere. When reading reports, check out who wrote the report and if the company is somewhere you would be interested in working. Finally, it is a cliché but networking counts! Get out there and talk to people, be interested in other people’s work and attend lots of events, London is the perfect place to do so.

How can you make your application stand out?
The panellists were very clear you should do your research to really understand what the company is about. You must demonstrate you know who you are applying to. Kat suggested saving your time applying to 100 companies in favour of spending time perfecting five or even one application that you really want. In this time it is important to show the skills you will be using in the role such as research and analysis. Demonstrate you know what the role involves, and how your skills fit the tasks involved.

If you haven’t got a formal education in the role you are applying to, show your interest through practical action or evidence such as volunteering or blogging.

What is the future of the sustainability industry?
There are no signs the sustainability sector growth is slowing. In fact, all signs point to it growing, as larger firms dedicate more resources and time to grow their sustainability departments leading. This will lead to a skills demand in the market. But the sector is changing. Terms like ‘sustainability’ and ‘CSR’ are being used less and less as sustainability becomes a good business practice rather than a side branch of this business.

As sustainability becomes integrated into businesses, jobs will be less advertised as pure sustainability roles and more about core business functions with an edge (or interest) in CSR and sustainability. This means it will be harder to find specific roles so you should focus on your interests and skills. David from Good Business mentioned that when hiring, his firm did not necessarily look for a background in sustainability but rather the skills (business or otherwise) that the candidate will bring to the firm. Secondary to this is a demonstrable interest in the company’s values. Think commercially; trends set to grow include Big Data, AI, and Block chain so start brushing up!

Nevertheless, this is definitely a growing sector, becoming important in every sector and job.

IT Sustainability Champions try the Iron Veggie Challange

March 16, 2018 /

This year for Sustainability Week our Sustainability Champions outdid themselves, hosting events, bake sales and litter picks, showing that no effort is too small to make a difference.

Our Sustainability Champion for IT at Drury Lane tells us all about what they did for Sustainability Week:

This week’s guest blog comes courtesy of Ioannis Golsouzidis. Ioannis is a Graduate Analyst for IT.

(The views presented do not necessarily reflect those of King’s Sustainability.)

Towards the end of November, the Head of Sustainability, Kat Thorne, joined the IT All Hands conference to encourage us all to sign up as Sustainability Champions. A group was formed shortly thereafter and we were keen to get underway in trying to achieve the Bronze award by May 2018 (in order to achieve the award, we have to meet the criteria set out in the Champions Workbook e.g. ‘actively promoting alternatives to the use of disposable water bottles.’)

Since forming the team, we have had our CIO sign our pledge, sent out communications to staff to power off non-essential equipment over Christmas, implemented waste paper trays in printing rooms around our department, changed some of our suppliers to more sustainable alternatives and, of course, planned some stuff for Sustainability Week amongst other things!

As part of the Sustainability Week, we organised several initiatives in order to help us reach our ambition of securing the Bronze award. After seeking some advice from the Sustainability team, we themed our week around vegetarianism (as eating less meat helps to reduce our carbon footprint) and here is how people got involved:

  1. InstaVeggie: All staff were encouraged to try eating a vegetarian/vegan lunch at least once during the week of 12th-16th February and send a picture of the dishes that had inspired them to do so. All participants got a small prize.
  2. Iron Veggie Challenge: Staff were challenged eat a vegetarian/vegan lunch for all 5 days and there were special prizes for those who sent in pictures.
  3. Sustainability Lunch: We organised a lunch at Sagar Covent Garden (a vegetarian restaurant) on the 15th February 2018 as a get together for staff across the department.

 

Here is what people thought of the initiatives:

“I really enjoyed the veggie week. I’d just completed veganuary so it was a great reason to keep up eating no meat.”

“I’d failed in my bid to do a dry Jan… so this was the next best thing!  It was easy to do and the people in my team were supportive”

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