environment

• Environment Officer (part-time): Ben Meaker

The following link will direct you to a PDF document which lists a few ideas on what could be done next year if we all work together. Some of these proposals are in the early stages of development and some will be harder to set up than others, but with your help and support, let’s make the impossible possible…

UEA Environment.pdf

What I’ve been doing at the moment:

1) Informing students & staff

I sent the above document to all students and staff to ask for their feedback. Thank you to all those who replied! You’re absolute legends! Here are a few suggestions/comments I received:

• Students and staff are well up for the Art Competition. Adding a bit of colour to our “drab” concrete campus looks promising! (Please note we will be using environmentally friendly paint only!).
• Collecting toner and inkjet cartridges: Reclaim-IT recycle them and donate money to Surfers Against Sewage (www.sas.org.uk) for each cartridge received
• Birdbaths (and bird/bat boxes in the woods) are go, go, go! A fellow student will (hopefully) be setting up a bird watching society in September! Wicked! Jungle is massive!
• A ‘local foods’ section in the UFO.
• Having reusable plastic cups in the Hive/Blend/Union Bar.
• Bringing your own mug to University and receiving a discount when you purchase a hot drink of some sort! Genius!
• Campaign Against Climate Change: London, 4th November 2006 – Be there, or be square!
• Having one compost bin at the bottom of each block for each Hall of Residences.
• A better management of junk mail (the kind you get shoved through your door!)
• Recycling competition – might be difficult to set up for next year (monitoring reasons) but well worth a try!
• Making the Green Guide more available to students and staff (i.e. distributing a copy to each kitchen in the hall of residences and in each office).
• ‘Color’ is spelled ‘colour’! ;-)

2) Helping to set up the Student Switch Off Scheme

We need to make sure the scheme is up and running by September (i.e. posters in every kitchen, a viable monitoring system, a dedicated website, sponsorship deals…).

3) UEA's Permaculture Society's Community Forrest Garden Project

UEA Permaculture Society has got this great project on the go. However, they are stuck at the moment, as Estates does not want to concede a desperately needed small plot of land next to their existing allotment. We need to make sure Estates accept their proposal in order for them to receive the funding.

4) Trying (desperately!) to reform out printing services

If we can get every printing station to either print double-sided, and/or on used/recycled paper… we could save a whole load of paper (and penguins!)

5) Changing the computer & plasma screen savers to a more purposeful use Energy saving and waste management tips and practices instead of info about Desperate Housewives…!

6) Organising a Green Day just after Freshers’ Week

• A fund-raising event: an egg and spoon race around the lake, a potato sack rally and apple bobbing! Great Fun! (The money would go to an environmentally based organisation such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace…)
• If possible, get a celebrity chef in to show students that it is possible to cook good, local, healthy food without going bankrupt!
• An environmental themed LCR night (let’s produce another kind of renewable electricity!).