People and Planet – Britain’s largest student campaigning network
– run a national Go Green Week every year, with schools, colleges and universities across the country urged to raise awareness on climate change. People and Planet are also behind the University Green League which is published annually in The Guardian which ranks universities on their policies and progress on reducing carbon emissions and increasing their commitment to sustainability in their operations and curriculum.
Students raise awareness on climate change
University of Worcester traditionally scores well; being in the ‘First Class Honours’ section and is currently 4th out of 143 institutions. During Go Green Week students run a week of activities to raise awareness with their peers and highlight climate change. The Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change published by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that climate change was unequivocal. It is believed the anthropogenic (human) impact from emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, are increasing the rate of global warming.
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University of Worcester events will be led by students studying sustainability in a range of different disciplines, including Art, Business, History, Education and Geography. For the first time students taking the sustainability elective are the main organisers with assistance from the Environment and Conservation student society.
Students volunteering for events at go green week showed weather was not going to get in their way. Despite, horrendous thrashing rain and strong winds on Wednesday they set off to walk the University Mile in support of their colleagues who have spent the last two months planning events for Go Green week. Some students and staff were logging miles for the Around the World challenge.
Whilst on the walk students discussed some of the issues raised in Monday’s posts on conservation and biodiversity at the campus and the links between quality of life and green spaces.
Soaked through, students passing over the finishing line had their times recorded on a score board constructed by Luke Walters. Times were written up with the annotation vw for very wet Top Gear style and walkers were given a medal. “Its been like an event in the winter Olympics I feel like I deserve a medal!”.
They also had a locally grown Russet apple, many students had never had this variety of apple.
We – the Friday group of students- Jas Loake, Emily Atkinson, Giulia Filibbelli, Charlotte Gibbs, Sarah Blackwell- think we have successfully raised awareness at least on St Johns campus, of re-use and recycling. We’ve shown that recycling can be cool. We’ve had a lot of interest in the newspaper origami and wire flowers for Valentines day, and the chilli plant seedlings in the re-use cut down plastic bottles.
We have learnt and developed friendships from co locating with the #EnergizeWorcester energy stall. We really enjoyed having a member of staff from the University recycling company who helped out on the stall today. She explained about how companies are becoming more aware of resource and costs associated with throwing things away.
We’ve learnt its a lot harder to organise events on the day. Its so important to communicate with each other. We started out the project not knowing everyone in our team. We are all from different subjects. Now we really appreciate each other and have learnt there is a lot to organising events. Even things like having to remember to escort visitors around the campus. We forget they don’t know their way around.
It was a really good day! We had FUN!
Go Green Week offers students and staff at the University of Worcester a wealth of exciting opportunities to engage with sustainability issues at both a practical and theoretical level. The diverse breadth of topics covered highlights the multi-disciplinary all-encompassing nature of sustainability incorporating its social, economic and environmental dimensions. From the urgent need for action on protecting and nurturing British bee colonies to the promotion of public transport and bikes to issues surrounding littering and the Pacific Trash Vortex, Go Green Week raises awareness and promotes action at multiple scales.
Students engaging in the sustainability elective have been integral to the planning and running of events this year. Working in teams on the delivery of specific days, not only have they had to come up with their own ideas of what to do, their assessment for the module involves them presenting on why the issues they raised are important to sustainability and provide evidence of their impact. This has enabled the building of key skills for project planning and the stimulation of debate on how best to engage the public in sustainability issues from a psychological perspective. Furthermore they’ve had to promote their events (designing banners, communicating via social media networks etc.), negotiate and collaborate with external participants (stall holders etc.) and collect data (using various research methods skills) to monitor and evaluate their success. This provides students with a very rich source of material for their CVs and immerses them in learning for sustainability.
Those students who have thrown themselves into the activities this week have clearly enjoyed the challenge and have built up a fuller appreciation of sustainability through practical application. This style of project based learning is being promoted and I can definitely see the benefits!