Green Gown Awards 2016 – Sustainability Professional Award – Paulo Cruz – Finalist

Paulo Cruz, Sustainability Officer - Glasgow Caledonian University

Paulo inspires, encourages and supports students and staff to reduce their environmental impacts and take positive steps towards adopting more sustainable lifestyles. He has been instrumental in embedding sustainability into GCU’s everyday activities. He believes in delivering projects that capture the interest and imagination, bringing sustainability to life in a tangible - and fun - way.

Paulo has championed a range of initiatives including sustainable travel; a furniture-sharing portal; a 10p discount for using reusable mugs at catering outlets and has nurtured a thriving cycling community. Under his guidance, GCU was presented with Scotland’s first Cycle Friendly Campus award (with distinction) from Cycling Scotland. Students and staff cycling to GCU has doubled to 4% and 9% respectively since 2012.

The University’s Environmental Management System is audited externally once a year and GCU was the first university in Scotland to be certified EcoCampus Platinum/ISO 14001, re-certified in June 2016.

Top 3 learnings

1 Keep it simple and focus on the basics

2 Talk to people as they will have great ideas – collaboration can often lead to wonderful things

3 Projects take time to evolve so persevere, experiment and accept that sometimes things will fail or go wrong.  Learn from your experiences. 

Videos

• Paulo Cruz, Sustainability Officer - Glasgow Caledonian University (click to hide)