| Green Impact

About

Green Impact Students’ Unions started in 2006, and has since evolved into working with over 100 Students’ Unions in 2011/12. It is an environmental accreditation programme with an awards element designed specifically for students’ unions. For decades students’ unions have been at the forefront of social and environmental campaigning. However, with the majority of students’ unions not being metered for the utilities they use, and with sabbatical teams changing annually, many of our members struggled to get to grips with their own environmental impacts. The programme provides a practical framework (achievable, quantifiable actions in an online workbook format) for greening students’ unions; these cover actions around waste, travel, procurement, biodiversity, energy use, student engagement.

A students’ union gains either a Working Towards, Bronze, Silver or Gold accreditation depending on how many actions it completes. The programme has a competition element – top performing unions get special recognition at our prestigious annual awards ceremony. Read the report of the 2012/13 Green Impact Students’ Unions awards ceremony here.

The programme is catered for both commercial and non commercial students’ union. The two workbooks can be accessed by the links below. You need to register here.

The commercial workbook : www.greenimpact.org.uk/GISUc

The non-commercial workbook : www.greenimpact.org.uk/GISUnc

Further to this, students’ unions can take part in our special awards and get recognised for specific initatives or programmes that they are running.

For the 2012/13 programme, we are giving students’ unions who have achived Gold standard for at least two consecutive years the exciting opportunity to get involved with Green Impact Students’ Unions Excellence.

Project cycle

The programme runs annually. Please find below approximate timescales. Please note the 2012/13 programme is now closed!

Below are dates for the 2012/13 programme:

18th July 2012: 2012/13 registration opens

08 August 2012 : 2012/13 programme launch and workbooks released

17th December 2012: Workbook submission

January-March 2013: Audits and evidence submission

27 March 2013: Awards ceremony

Support

Throughout the year students’ unions are supported by a dedicated Green Impact Project Officer from NUS who advises on any queries, runs good practice webinars and is also present at many national events running various workshops. NUS also offers unions in depth support through full day environmental audits or training through our E&E opt-in group.

Achievements

Over the last 6 years, GISU has been going from strength to strength. For a simple summary of our achievements across UK Students’ Unions, check out our 2011/12 Portfolio. Explore our gallery to see the showcase of participating unions, their work, and their fantastic awards ceremonies.

Keep informed with our News and Achievements page. We will constantly update this throughout the year to give you the latest information.