The Green Transformation Project will work collaboratively with the University to enable more students to participate in sustainability actions within their accommodation and become better neighbours in the community.
The project will target student accommodation into reducing electricity usage by 10 per cent and increase recycling rates by 27 per cent. Alongside this the Big Give will be expanded after experiencing a record-breaking year this summer. Bristol students donated over nine tonnes of their unwanted household items, goods and clothing and raised over £16,000 for charity in June. The project aims to increase this to forty tonnes next year.
Ellie Williams, Vice President Community at UBU, said: “We’re really excited that our bid for the NUS Students' Green Fund was successful. We get to follow the lead Bristol set by winning Green Capital of Europe 2015 and become champions of sustainability. Our recent success of the Big Give demonstrates how engaged our students are in being green and we can’t wait to get started putting all the ideas we have into action.”
The funding will help create a network of sustainability champions who will facilitate green campaigns, including Meat Free Mondays, Grow Your Own, recycling and energy reduction initiatives. Research will also be conducted into creating a Students’ Union charity shop.
National Union of Students (NUS) is providing UBU with the funding required for the first two years of the project’s delivery, with long term legacy being built into the project to ensure that its positive impact keeps expanding over the coming years.
Martin Wiles, Head of Sustainability at the University of Bristol, said:"This is a key transformational project working with students to find ways of living and learning more sustainably. The Student Green Fund was five times oversubscribed, so it’s very gratifying that we have been awarded funding and this reflects the quality of our application and work."
UBU are part of a wider collection of students’ unions using the £5m to green their institutions and wider communities – with the overall Students’ Green Fund engaging 50,000 students nationally, and embedding sustainability into the core purpose of higher education across England.