Green Impact Award Winners

22nd June 2015

Congratulations to those who won the NUS Green Impact Awards. Green Impact special awards celebrate the most incredible things happening in sustainability across universities and colleges.

David Somervell, University of Edinburgh, won the first ever Green Impact Lifetime Achievement Award. Click here to hear from David on what winning the Award meant for him. Iain Patton, CEO of EAUC was the first to congratulate David saying “David has been a true champion for sustainability and the sector. His sheer determination to improve the sector and to influence and inspire staff and students to take action has been tireless and is an example to us all. I can think of no-one more worthy of this special Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Winners of Green Impact Awards

Innovation for Engagement
Net Impact Edinburgh Society – University of Edinburgh

The Edinburgh Sustainably Jam brought together students from different disciplines to solve sustainable development problems through a 48 hour hackathon.

It demonstrated the creativity and talent of the team of student organisers behind it, and employed an innovative educational model that was both academic and practical in nature.

Environmental Improvement
Vicky Simpson – SURF – University of Salford

Vicky Simpson, team lead at the Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF), created an environmental improvement within their catering choices.

The team have opted to go green by requesting vegan food for all external catering for conferences, workshops and meetings, under ordering for all events by 20 per cent, and provide compostable take away boxes and sandwich bags to allow visitors to take food home and therefore reduce waste.

Community Action
IEGPD Cledwyn – University of Aberystwyth

As Aberystwyth is a seaside town, the Green Impact team went and joined in with local fortnightly beach cleans.

In their first session, the weather was atrocious with showers and strong winds yet despite this the volunteers were able to collect fifty two kilos of rubbish and plastic pollution in just over an hour.

An additional positive spin off from this is that all the plastic bottles removed from this beach and others will be donated to an upcoming art installation at a local art gallery.

Environmental Hero
Clare Adams - Rosalind Franklin Superlab - NTU

This year, Clare has been a new member of the team, taking the lab to win a silver award as well as taking on much more to progress the sustainability of the department.

Taking part in the RSPB big garden watch, setting up a team Fairtrade bake sale, and winning the Clifton round of the universities, and now Clare has also put forward proposals for the Rosalind Franklin building to have a green roof.

Shona Brown - Residential Services – University of Leeds

Shona became the student green rep for Oxley halls of residence in autumn 2014, and has also been appointed as a Green Impact project assistant, and a Sustainability Student Architect at the university.

She has organised the planting of crocus bulbs, coordinated the collection of food items for Holbeck Elderly Aid, planned and implemented a food composting scheme on site, introduced a plastic bag recycling scheme and planned and introduced a 'vertical garden' on the site, with plants contained in recycled plastic bottles, irrigated by a rainwater collection system.

Student Leadership
Jack Pickering – University of Cardiff

As an intern in the Sustainable Places Research Institute, worked with a fellow student from the School of Architecture to produce an alternative campus map that re-imagined what the university campus might look like if sustainability were located at its core.

Following his placement, Jack has presented this work at university-wide engagement events, leading Jack to contribute to a funding-bid for campus growing space, put together by the students’ union.

In autumn 2015 he will begin a PhD at Cardiff School of Geography and Planning that will explore sustainable food consumption. His team cannot recommend Jack highly enough for his enthusiasm and critical thinking in the field of sustainability

National Excellence
UPP Birks Grange – University of Exeter

Following their successful food waste collection trial in their first year of Excellence in 2013-14, the UPP team have fully rolled out food waste collections from all communal UPP kitchens on Campus (home to over 2000 students).

Over 2 tonnes of food waste was collected in the two months following the roll out in September 2014, massively reducing the amount of waste tipped as landfill.

The work that the UPP team have achieved has also encouraged and inspired the University to collect food waste from catered residences and catering outlets on campus, with the hop of expanding this to include University-owned self-catered residences in coming months.

Click here to find out more