The E4SL Forum

“Our P&P group set up a Going Greener Steering Group called the Education for Sustainable Living (E4SL) Forum. Together with the uni’s Environment Team we created a monthly forum that allows students and staff to express their ideas regarding environmental issues around campus. Monthly meetings have included workshops from Emerge and the Environment Team.

We’ve started by focussing on the area of waste, one of the areas that MMU massively needs to improve. We’ve sent letters to the VC and the uni’s Directorate regarding paper usage; enabling double-sided printing and procuring recycled paper. So far our ideas have all been received with great enthusiasm and a commitment to create a university-wide strategy!

The Forum is involved in planning Go Green Week 2010 and at our next meeting we’ll brainstorm other manageable waste-related tasks that the Forum can change around campus. We’ve also set up a new Mug for Life initiative, helping students to save 112g of CO2 with every refill.

To promote the E4SL Forum and make it as accessible and easy as possible for everyone at MMU to join in (both staff and students) we’ve set up a blog, a facebook group, a twitter feed and created posters and short videos to advertise our meetings and work.

Zero Waste Recycling Project

The MMU group is focussing on one of the four key low-carbon transition behaviours being targeted by Degrees Cooler - recycling more. Working closely with staff from their Environment Team, MMU People & Planet have coordinated the Zero Waste Recycling Project. The project is now in its second year and has been extended to cover three halls of accommodation and recycled over 10 tonnes of waste.

It involves recycling and redistributing to charity all the shoes, clothes, food, cutlery, electrical equipment and even matresses that students don’t need when they move out of halls each year. The group took a new approach to the project this year to get students into the habit of doing their own recycling - instead P&P members doing it for them.

Big green banks were placed outside halls and boxes for electrical equipment, food and cutlery were put inside MMU halls. The group then held two big recycling days to sort through all the materials collected, go through bins and clear out things that were left in flats to make sure than nothing was missed. The project carried on throughout the summer to ensure every last item was recycled.

A group member commented:

“This year we are aiming to extend Zero Waste to even more halls. We couldn’t do this without the help of the Project Manager - we’ve established a great working relationship with the Environment team and he deserves a lot of credit for this as well!

Go Green Week

Spreading the low-carbon love for Go Green Week

Every year People & Planet coordinates a national week of student action to raise awareness of climate change and help the education sector cut the carbon.

It’s a perfect opportunity to unleash new transition projects, showcase the practical improvements that action groups have been working towards and to get everyone in the community clued up Going Greener - and that’s exactly what Manchester Metropolitain University are using Go Green Week 2010 for.

Their week of activities will highlight different elements of greener living and behaviour each day, including food, waste, transport and energy. Their programme this year includes:

• Low-Carbon Diet Day - providing vegan & vegetarian food tastings followed by a film on the environmental impacts of food in the evening

• Recycling Day - helping people get creative with plastic bags during the day, followed by a Carbon Speed Dating event to fundraise for People & Planet.

• Go Bananas for Fairtrade and Haiti - attempting to break records with a banana-eating event and fundraiser for victims of Haiti.

• Clothes Swap Shop - running all week and followed by a green graffiti night on Thursday.

• Critical Mass - linking up with Manchester’s critical mass cycle ride to get people out of their cars and onto the streets.

Check out MMU’s full programme of activities

Big Student Switch Off

A key partner of in the Degrees Cooler project is the Student Switch Off campaign which recruits eco-power rangers to run energy-saving competitions in halls with the aim of cutting 10% energy in 2010.

Alex Fountain writes about their involvement in this popular campaign to get everyone saving energy

“People & Planet have coordinated the Big Student Switch Off at Manchester Metropolitain Uni, working closely with the Environment Team. We started off by making sure the project would reach everyone by putting a flyer and ‘switch it off’ stickers in every student’s halls pack. We designed and distributed over 500 posters so that every student in halls at MMU had a project poster in their kitchen.

We also managed to get local incentives such as free weekly tickets from 5 popular nightclubs to encourage more students to try and win prizes. To remind people of the project all year round, we made 5 giant Switch Off banners which are hanging on the side of the halls of residence buildings.

The numbers game

For Freshers Fair we made around 500 goodie bags with thermometers, stickers, key rings and information about the project and signed up around 400 eco-power rangers. We then coordinated a series of lecture shout-outs and did some door-to-door canvassing to get more people signed up to the scheme. In total now we have signed up 1200 eco-power ranger which is the highest from all 33 universities taking part.

Results

We’ve also continued signing up eco-power rangers all year round on all 3 MMU campuses: All Saints, Didsbury and Cheshire and the response has been fantastic. We **saved over £3000 in energy bills just in October, and by November we had saved 4.3% of MMU’s energy bills (inc. Didsbury) and 7.3% of Cheshire’s energy bill.