Green Gown Awards 2017 - Southampton Solent University - Finalist

Environmental and sustainability strategy – Waste Improvement Project

Southampton Solent University is all about creating opportunities for its students, staff and partners. The Waste Improvement Project has seen the University listen to internal and external stakeholders to adapt its approach in reducing waste. A number of tailored programmes have been developed to ensure maximum benefit to the University, with a year on year increase recorded in recycling rates.

Programmes include 'Solent Sorts It', where students living in halls of residence compete to achieve the highest recycling rate. Programmes like this have been supported by the University’s participation in national NUS campaigns including Black Out, Student Switch Off and Green Impact.

Partners including Sodexo, NUS, Noonan and Suez have worked in collaboration with Solent to drive awareness and ensure a joint up approach is delivered to staff and students.

Top 3 learnings:

1 Engaging internal stakeholders throughout the duration of the project helps to generate buy in from end users. 

2 Where possible projects need to be adapted to meet the needs of the end user, keeping the process as simple as possible.

3 Collaboration with external partners enables resource, knowledge and experience to be shared, in turn reducing costs.

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• Environmental and sustainability strategy – Waste Improvement Project (click to hide)