Green Impact Assistant

Background

Queen Mary, University of London is one of the UK’s most successful higher education institutions, described by the times Higher Education as “the biggest star among the research-intense institutions” in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, in which it ranked 13^th in the UK. A college of the University of London, and a member of the 1994 group, Queen Mary climbed 44 places, ranking 120th in this year's Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Student feedback earned it the acclaimed 'Most Improved Student Experience' award in 2009.

Having over 3,000 staff and 15,000 students, Queen Mary has three main campuses spanning Central and East London delivering world class degree programmes and research covering a wide range of subjects as a multi-faculty institution. With recent multi-million pound investment in their facilities, the college uniquely offers integrated residential accommodation for students, at their award-winning development in Mile End,East London.

Green Impact is an environmental accreditation scheme that encourages pro-environmental behaviours by staff. It empowers sustainability champions within their workplace, helping them gain recognition for their environmental efforts, whilst playing on the competitive spirit of staff working in teams. It provides people and their departments with a tangible framework for improving their environmental performance, breaking down complex environmental issues into more manageable bite-sized chunks.

Green Impact forms part of the NUS’s wider strategy to support students’ unions by supporting them to green their own operations, their institutions and the wider community. All NUS environmental programmes seek to generate sustainable income for students’ unions by paying them to get involved in local delivery of our central projects. The environmental programmes are also committed to providing volunteering opportunities for students that will help with their employability, especially through skills that support the transition to a low carbon economy.

The scheme is all about practical actions that tackle common bad practice. A number of departments are audited to determine what common bad practices exist across an institution, and then a list of practical actions is developed to address them. These actions are carefully chosen so that any member of staff can do them on behalf of their team or department. From recycling, to investing in more efficient equipment, to encouraging biodiversity, or Fairtrade, the scheme covers a broad range of issues under the sustainability umbrella, all tailored to an individual institution to cover local policy and process.

For more information on Green Impact please go to:

http://www.eauc.org.uk/green_impact

http://www.nus.org.uk/greenimpactpledge