Universities starting to Buy Right
People & Planet students across the country are already putting pressure on their universities to Buy Right.
After hosting a inspirational evening of the Stitched up in Honduras speaker tour UWE students in Bristol continued their campaign to fight for human rights for the people who make their university’s stuff. In an early victory for their campaign People & Planet students and a supportive purchasing staff have set up a new Ethics and Quality Committee, which will meet for the first time on 3 February, and discuss improvements to the university’s procurement policy from the perspective of human rights.
Image © UWE
Mipsie Marshall from UWE said
It’s been surprisingly easy to make a lot of progress on this campaign. It’s got the potential to make a huge impact. Our uni alone spends on average £35 million every year buying stuff, and how many people in those supply chains are working under sweatshop conditions? We don’t have any notion of the implications of what our universities buy. It’s amazing to feel a connection to workers in the global South by running this campaign.
UWE’s Head of Purchasing has already had a satellite call with the Worker Rights Consortium too, showing her progressive response to the student’s campaigning.
Image © UEA
Over at UEA, the P&P group are making big strides forward, with a student union motion they will submit on ethical procurement to push even further than the Fairtrade motion they put through last December.
sheffield university logo
Image © sheffield university
And in Sheffield, the P&P group are organising to act on the Buy Right goals too, after being the first university to boycott Fruit of the Loom, a campaign which ended in a historic success at the end of last year. Without pausing for breath, People & Planet groups are now gaining even more momentum.
Tell us what your university are doing, or find out more by going to the Buy Right pages, or having a workshop at your university.
