Green Impact is a United Nations award-winning programme designed to support environmentally and socially sustainable practice within organisations. This can mean anything from communicating recycling systems, to committing to go Fairtrade; from supporting team health and well-being campaigns, to working towards carbon-neutrality. 

The Sustainability Action Committee managed to complete lots of great actions for the Gold award including:

• PhysBar and the staff common room are transitioning to using only Fairtrade tea, coffee, sugar and hot chocolate.
• We have written an in-depth travel guide to encourage visitors to travel to the school as sustainably as possible.
• We have installed a bird feeder in Royal Fort Gardens to encourage increased biodiversity.
• We have started a monthly sustainability newsletter with contributions from both staff and undergraduate students, with tips for work and at home, sustainable careers information and sharing work that we have been doing to make our labs and buildings better for the environment.
• We wrote a sustainability statement that is now featured on our website and in all of our job adverts
• A couple of our committee members undertook carbon literacy training to improve our understanding of global warming and the impact we can have both in work and at home.

Well done to everyone involved for all of their hard work. Particular recognition should go to Admin Assistant Josie Maskell, who led the Green Impact effort and put a huge amount of work into completing actions, co-ordinating the submission and completing the audit.