Impact on the environment

Staff in the Corporate Affairs team work closely with many different partners - locally, nationally and around the world. Our primary objective is to reinforce our reputation as a world-leading University. An important part of this is our straightforward approach to corporate social responsibility: we're trying to make things better. We try to operate in a sustainable way, minimising our impact on the environment.

You can find out about all the University's energy and environment achievements on our BeCause it matters web pages.

Green Impact

Green Impact is an initiative run by the NUS to encourage behavioural changes in order to reduce the carbon footprint of universities across the country. For the past four years the University has taken part in the Green Impact initiative with departments competing to complete as many criteria as possible from the online workbook. Each criterion completed helps reduce the carbon footprint of the University and departments are rewarded for their efforts and achievements. Corporate Affairs has taken part in Green Impact for the past three years.

Going for Gold

Year on year the Corporate Affairs Green Impact team has improved its efforts, achieving a Bronze award in 2009/10 and Silver in 2010/11. Last year we became the proud winners of a Gold award and we also scooped Best Energy Saving idea. This year the team is back together and we are once again going for gold.

Innovative Ideas

We achieved the Best Energy Saving Idea award for our innovative communications campaign. This uses cartoon characters to create informative and engaging dialogue to encourage positive behaviour change.

Environmental Ernie (protagonist) and Badman Bert (antagonist) highlight the conflict between wanting to be green and the difficulties this presents. The Bert and Ernie puppets are very visible in the department, positioned around key points such as light switches and printers, providing regular visual cues and non-invasive reminders to stay green. Comic strips of environmental conversations and Ernie’s tweets mean we engage in regular green debates, a fun way to encourage ownership of environmental best practice.

With the campaign we have achieved a 90 per cent success rate in the Energy Fairy monitor switch-off campaign, 30 per cent decrease in printing during an inter-team competition, a 100 per cent response rate in Ernie’s ‘How Green Are You?’ survey, proactive initiatives such as an ethical baking and eco secret Santa. It plays to our strengths using expertise in communications, social media and marketing.

Since picking up the award Bert and Ernie have reached the dizzying heights of fame and now have their very own make a green impact video courtesy of Leon Mallett, Social and Digital Media Officer - with help from the Green Impact team on lyrics and images.