Sustainability goes full steam ahead at the 2013 Green Gown Awards!

13th November 2013

Over 325 sustainability leaders were on the edge of their seats at the world's oldest surviving railway turning shed last night as the BBC’s Professor Iain Stewart announced the winners of this year’s Green Gown Awards. It was an inspirational night with 81 finalist institutions, 14 winners, 21 highly commended and 3 international winners! We hope you will join us in congratulating these exemplary institutions for their inspirational initiatives!

View the list of 2013 winners, highly commended entries and International Award winners

We'll soon be adding some photographs from the evening here and on Twitter so you can see our winners celebrating in style!

The Winners’ Brochure explores the journeys all these institutions have taken. We encourage you to delve into this rich resource of sustainability best practice and hope that you draw some inspiration and are able to replicate an initiative within your own institution. We encourage the dissemination of good practice so all the 2013 Green Gown winners, highly commended entries and finalists have been asked to provide a case study and a short video on their projects. These will be available from the Sustainability Exchange in early 2014. We'll also be running 'exchange' webinars too to encourage further engagement and to enable you to ask questions!

The dissemination of these best practices is supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). 

About the Awards night

The action packed evening was hosted by geology’s 'rock star' Professor Iain Stewart MBE - Iain is best known as the presenter of a number of BBC programmes including the BAFTA nominated Earth: The Power of the Planet. Iain is also a Fellow of the Geological Society of London and President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, Professor of Geoscience Communication at Plymouth University and a member of the Scientific Board of UNESCO’s International Geoscience Programme.

Guests included university and college representatives from across the UK, joined by leading figures from institutions such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE), Association of Colleges (AoC) and the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) to commend visionary projects which are pushing the sustainable good practice boundaries.

The Awards Ceremony venue, The Roundhouse, Derby College, maintained the important connection between the Awards ethos and its continued support for the sector, including the Gold Food for Life Soil Association accredited menu and the sustainable table decorations made by Derby College's very own floristry students.

Finally, we congratulate all of our finalists and thank you for sharing your shining examples of sustainability best practice. Every year provides fresh inspiration and we look forward to more fantastic applications in 2014. The Awards open in May – so get ready to apply!